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THE 
REBUILDING OF EUROPE 



Other Books by David Jayne Hill 

A History of Diplomacy in the In- 
ternational Development of Europe. 

Vol. I — The Struggle for Universal 
Empire. With 5 Colored Maps, 
Chronological Tables, List of 
Treaties and Index. Pp. XXIII- 
481. $5.00. 

Vol. II— The Establishment of Ter- 
ritorial Sovereignty. With 4 Col- 
ored Maps, Tables, etc. Pp. 
XXIV-688. $5.00. 

Vol. Ill — The Diplomacy of the Age 
of Absolutism. With 5 Colored 
Maps, Tables, etc. Pp. XXVI- 
706. $6.00. 

World Organization, as Affected by 
the Nature of the Modern State. 
Pp. IX-214. $1.50. 

Translated also into French and German. 

The People's Government. 

Pp. X-288. $1.25 net. 

Americanism — What It Is. 

Pp. XV-283. $1.25 net. 



THE 
REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

A SURVEY OF FORCES 
AND CONDITIONS 



BY 



DAVID JAYNE HILL 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1917 









Copyright, 1917, by 
The Century Co. 



Published October, 1917 



/ 
OCT 30 1917 
©CU476823 



PREFACE 

The world is passing through the birth pangs 
of a new historic period. Europe, because it con- 
trols the destiny of the greater part of the earth, 
was the first to feel these convulsions, but the 
transformation taking place is essentially a world 
movement. 

The struggle now going on has been variously 
called "a trade war," a contest regarding "the 
destiny of the smaller states," "a war for democ- 
racy," and "a war for principles." No one of 
these expressions quite definitely conveys the real 
significance of the Great War, because no one of 
them adequately presents to the mind its relation 
to the changes in political thought that have oc- 
curred during the last few decades. 

What has been most completely overlooked is 
the fact that the Great War was not in its begin- 
ning, and is not now, so much a struggle between 
different forms of government as it is a question 
regarding the purpose and spirit of all govern- 



vi PREFACE 

ments. The Austrian-Serbian-Russian conflict, 
promoted by Germany with ulterior designs, did 
not in any way involve forms of government. All 
the participants were monarchies, and no issue 
for or against democracy was presented. When 
France and England, acting as their interests and 
obligations required, were afterward forced into 
the fray, even then there was no question of the in- 
ternal organization of governments, but it was 
seen to be a war for the salvation of Europe as 
a society of independent states. It has never 
become a war for democracy in the sense that 
there is an attempt by any nation to universalize 
a democratic form of government. That would 
be a doubtful venture, inconsistent with the true 
nature of democracy. 

The truth is that the Great War is a revolution 
against the alleged rights of arbitrary force, ren- 
dered necessary by the failure to reach the goal 
of a secure international organization by an evo- 
lutionary process. 

Modern nations have succeeded, with a few 
exceptions, in developing constitutional govern- 
ments in which ideas of justice have been em- 
bodied in systems of law, but they have also in- 



PREFACE vii 

herited international traditions that were orig- 
inated in an age when military force was the basis 
of state existence. These traditions are embodied 
in the following four propositions: 

(1) The essence of a state is "sovereignty," 
denned as "supreme power." 

(2) A sovereign state has the right to declare 
war upon any other sovereign state for any rea- 
son that seems to it sufficient. 

(3) An act of conquest by the exercise of 
superior military force entitles the conqueror to 
the possession of the conquered territory. 

(4) The population goes with the land and 
becomes subject to the will of the conqueror. 

Such monstrous doctrines as these would never 
have been invented by any jurist or statesman un- 
der the constitutional regime, yet they are the 
postulates that underlie all the great European 
settlements, and have never been repudiated by 
any European international congress, not even by 
the conferences held at The Hague in 1899 and 
1907. On the contrary, these propositions were 
tacitly assumed as composing the unwritten con- 
stitution of the European system of sovereign 
states, and virtually all the powers there repre- 



Vlll 



PREFACE 



sented had at some time, and in some cases 
habitually, put them into practice. 

What gave to the Hague conferences their great 
interest for the public generally was the hope 
that there would come out of them some new 
enunciation of international law that would put 
an end to war and conquest. This was the strong 
human current that circled about the conferences, 
but among the delegates it was well understood 
that a direct blow aimed at any one of the four 
propositions just stated would mean the dissolu- 
tion of the conference, and, if insisted upon, would 
involve a general war, for there were still na- 
tional ambitions which war alone could satisfy. 

Peace, it was hoped, might be prolonged by 
reliance upon the old see-saw, "The balance of 
power," fortified by increased armaments. Sup- 
plementary to this was the pious wish, which in 
the clearer heads never amounted to faith, that 
no nation would be guilty of dishonor by an 
abuse of power, although its freedom to do so was 
undisputed. Gently and timidly, restrictions 
upon the too barbarous exercise of the state's 
traditionally recognized prerogatives were pro- 
posed in the form of conventions about war on 



PREFACE ix 

land and war on the sea, with provisions for an 
honorable settlement of differences if any nation 
desired to be just; but even these measures were 
long contested, and the more important of them 
persistently opposed by certain powers. 

The process of peaceful evolution toward in- 
ternational justice having failed to throw off the 
thraldom imposed upon Europe by the tradition 
of absolute sovereignty and its corollaries, it re- 
quired no special clairvoyance to see that a revolu- 
tion would some day come born of blood and fire. 
It has come. Great powers, appealing to the in- 
famous dogma of unlimited right on the part of 
the state, have placed their wicked "necessities" 
above all law, above all morality, above all hu- 
nanity, and have plunged Europe and a great part 
of the world into a yawning gulf of death and 
devastation. To resist that arrogance and to end 
not only this war, but any war based on these 
assumptions, is the aim of the resisting powers. 
It is the making of a new world ; but there can be 
no new world until there is a new Europe in which 
the dogma that the state is a licensed brigand is 
smitten dead. 

It is the purpose of this volume to show that 



x PREFACE 

this dogma, and not any particular form of mere 
state organization, is the real enemy that must be 
destroyed. The incidents of the Great War are 
well known and require no mention here. It is 
to the deeper problems that attention should be 
directed. Nor is it the intention of this little 
book to add to the array of purely subjective 
solutions of these problems, — for the true solu- 
tion can be found only by the united efforts of a 
preponderance of the great powers, — -but rather 
to point out what are the really fundamental is- 
sues involved in the Great War, and to take ac- 
count of the forces and conditions which may aid 
or hinder the solution. 

Six of the chapters contained in this volume 
were, in substance, first presented to the public 
last March in the form of lectures on the Schouler 
Foundation at the Johns Hopkins University; 
five of them were in part printed in the Century 
Magazine for May, June, July, September, and 
October of the present year. 
Washington, D. C 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Europe's Heritage of Evil 3 

II International Ideals 38 

III Economic Imperialism 68 

IV The Vision of a Commonwealth . . .104 

V The Transfiguration of the German 

Empire 136 

VI International Organization . . . .172 

VII The Constructive Power of Democracy . 208 

VIII America's Interest in the New Europe . 236 

Index 283 



THE REBUILDING OF 
EUROPE 



THE REBUILDING OF 
EUROPE 

CHAPTER I 

EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 

IN the retrospect of future historians the year 
1914 may have a place not less important 
than the year 1453, which has been accepted as 
marking the dividing line between medieval and 
modern history. The fall of Constantinople and 
the establishment of the Ottoman Turks in Eu- 
rope revealed the insufficiency of the bond that 
had held Christendom together. In like man- 
ner the present European War reveals the in- 
adequacy of purely national conceptions for the 
complete organization of mankind; for as Chris- 
tendom failed to unite the whole world by faith, 
so civilization has failed to maintain itself by a 
mere balance of forces. 

The great tragedy of history has been the con- 



4 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

flict between the universal humanism that Rome 
endeavored to establish, first by law and after- 
ward by faith, and the tribalism of the primitive 
European races. In the fifteenth century tribal- 
ism triumphed. The moral unity of Europe, 
which Rome had vainly tried to secure, wholly 
disappeared. Both the empire and the papacy, 
in which great minds had placed implicit faith, 
proved unable, in the face of racial conflicts, 
either to rule the world or to preserve the co- 
herence of Christendom. All that had given 
grandeur to Rome seemed to have ended in failure 
when the Greek Empire, the last bulwark of 
Roman imperialism, already long and bitterly 
alienated from the Roman Curia, paid the pen- 
alty of separatism, and fell before the Ottoman as- 
sault. With it the splendid postulates of the 
Roman imperial idea — the essential unity of man- 
kind, the supremacy of law based upon reason 
and divine command, the moral solidarity of all 
who accepted the formulae of faith, and the ef- 
fective organization of peace as a condition of 
human happiness — suffered a fatal catastrophe. 
In place of the Pax Romana, Faustrecht, the right 
of the mailed fist, widely prevailed within the 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 5 

confines of Christendom. Slowly dying during 
a thousand years, the traditions of the ancient 
world, which the Greek Empire had endeavored 
to preserve long after they had been undermined 
by tribalism in the West, were now definitively 
abandoned. The future was seen to belong to 
the separate nations, which alone possessed a 
strong sense of unity. The disparity of races, the 
spirit of local independence, the conflict between 
the spiritual and the temporal forms of obedience, 
combined to render possible the development of 
powerful national monarchies, and dynastic am- 
bition was eager to make use of them for its own 
designs. 

There was, indeed, an element of progress in 
this reassertion of the tribal spirit. The rule of 
Rome had destroyed the balance between law and 
liberty. The vital energies of the primitive races 
could not be thus suppressed. All the rich vari- 
ety of human diversity pressed the issue of na- 
tionality. In order to give to law its complete 
authority, it was necessary that it should be de- 
veloped out of experience rather than imposed as 
a dominant system. Each nation must arrive 



6 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

at the common destination by pursuing its own 
path and under its own leadership. The forma- 
tion of nation-states was, therefore, morally in- 
evitable. It was essential to the full development 
of human capacities. 

The defect in this process of evolution lay in 
the cruelty and ignorance of the barbarians out 
of whom these nation-states were formed. The 
procedure was of necessity a work of force rather 
than a work of intelligence. On the part of the 
masses of the population the instinct of avoiding 
danger gave to any efficient protector a vast au- 
thority. On the part of natural leaders the in- 
stinct of domination became the shaping power of 
the state. As a result, the nation-state, slowly 
evolving from the feudal state, became a dynastic 
creation, in which race, the natural basis of na- 
tionality, played a subordinate role. Conquest 
seldom proceeded along strictly ethnic lines. 
The task was primarily geographic expansion and 
strategic security. Once conquered, the differ- 
ent races gradually coalesced with their conquer- 
ors to form distinct national units in which blood 
yielded supremacy to national traditions, and the 
most opposite diversities of race, language, and 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 7 

religious belief were thus finally compounded into 
the substance of the nation-states. 

This, in brief outline, is the history of vir- 
tually all the nation-states of Europe. Not one 
of them can boast of absolute purity of race. Not 
one of them can establish a claim that its state- 
hood is founded on ethnic homogeneity. Not 
one of them can profess that it is the product of 
conscious and voluntary adhesion to a predeter- 
mined theory of what the state should be and who 
should compose its substance. 

And yet these nation-states are in no sense mere 
accidents. However self-conscious some of them 
may have become, they were originally the crea- 
tions of dynastic purpose. The unity they now 
possess was derived from the sense of community 
that gradually grew up within them through close 
contact, common interests, common sufferings, 
and common triumphs; but they are all in reality 
creations of force, exercised chiefly by dominant 
dynasties, under which in the process of time 
they have arrived at a condition of national self- 
consciousness. 

This in some cases has been so intense that 
the will of the nation has become more powerful 



8 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

than the will of the dynasty; which, therefore, has 
either been cast off entirely, as in France, which 
exists by the will of the nation, or permitted to 
survive as a mere symbol of national unity, as in 
England. Only in a few instances does the 
dynasty continue to exercise uncontrolled author- 
ity. 

In the process of forming the nation-state two 
instruments have been employed for the realiza- 
tion of dynastic purposes: war and marriage. 
The territorial expansion obtained by the war- 
like energies of a conquering tribe under the 
leadership of a hereditary chief has been vastly 
aided by the union of such tribes through the in- 
termarriage of their chiefs and the process of in- 
heritance, thus producing a tribe within a tribe. 
Great empires have been formed by wedlock, as 
mighty rivers are produced by the confluence of 
many tributaries into one stream. The house 
of Hapsburg, for example, owes more to Venus 
than to Mars. In the course of its history whole 
peoples, remote from one another in space and 
still more remote in character, have been trans- 
ferred to these foreign rulers by marriage con- 
tracts. The nation-state has seldom been ruled 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 9 

by the pure blood of even its own dominant tribe. 
From the very beginning royalty has been in 
some degree an international institution, a kind 
of super-tribe destined to rule by the mere fact 
of heredity, composed of kinsmen at the altar, but 
of foemen in the field. And, notwithstanding the 
devotion of monarchs to nationalism, there has 
always existed a secret solidarity of royal inter- 
ests. 

Success in war always creates its own moral 
standards, and dynasticism has not failed to do 
so. Republican Rome took pride in never wag- 
ing an unjust war, and had its college of fetials 
to determine whether an action even against bar- 
barians was just. This practice arose from a 
supreme devotion to the idea of law and a rever- 
ence for human reason as the source of law. The 
founders and expanders of the nation-states have 
entertained no such scruples. They have adopted 
the motto that the will of the prince is law, and 
that there is no binding law above it. The na- 
tion-states, and, in truth, most others, have as- 
sented to this dictum, the only question in de- 
bate being who really possesses the authority of 
the prince. 



10 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

The "sovereign," whoever he is, being without 
a law to govern him, an abstract attribute of the 
ruler, called "sovereignty," has been generally 
accepted as the substance of the state, and its 
powers have been conceived to be, as those of 
the absolute prince confessedly were, altogether 
unlimited. Since Christendom was abolished, 
and tribalism has prevailed, unlimited power has 
been recognized, and is still recognized, in the 
public law of Europe as the foundation of the 
state. 

The most fundamental of all the questions 
arising out of the Great War is, Can this open 
repudiation of humanism in the interest of tribal- 
ism be permitted to endure? Is it true that a 
sovereign — any sovereign, even the totality of the 
so-called "sovereign people," of any tribe or na- 
tion-state — has a right to claim unlimited au- 
thority or even authority limited only by the ex- 
tent of its power ? Is there not a law for the con- 
duct of states, written or unwritten, which all 
sovereigns should be required to obey, wholly ir- 
respective of the theoretical source or actual ex- 
tent of their power? But if there is such a law, 
recognized or unrecognized, the conception of 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 11 

sovereignty as in its nature absolute and un- 
limited is evidently false. 

It was Machiavelli who expounded the tribal 
theory of the state and the methods of securing 
its advancement ; and in this he was inventing no 
system of his own, but merely stating in definite 
terms the principles which successful monarchs 
were already putting into practice. " 'The 
Prince,' " declares Villari, "had a more direct ac- 
tion on real life than any other book in the 
world, and a larger share in emancipating Eu- 
rope from the Middle Ages" ; but it would be more 
exact to say that Machiavelli's work, written in 
1513 and published in 1532, was the perfect ex- 
pression of an emancipation from moral re- 
straits far advanced. The Christian idealism of 
the Middle Ages had already largely disap- 
peared. The old grounds of obligation had been 
swept away. Men looked for their safety to the 
nation-state rather than to the solidarity of Chris- 
tendom; and the state, as Machiavelli's gospel 
proclaimed it, consisted in absolute and irrespon- 
sible control exercised by one man who should em- 
body its unity, strength, and authority. 



12 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Thus began the modern world. The concep- 
tions of the Roman law, especially those of im- 
perium and majestas, were partly revived in sup- 
port of the royal dynasties in their struggle with 
the residues of feudalism, which resulted in the 
development of the national monarchies; but 
they had lost their note of universality. Even 
Christianity ceased to be ecumenical. There re- 
mained, indeed, a traditional fellowship and fra- 
ternity of kings, but it was virtually little more 
than a code of formal etiquette. 

With the dissolution of the feudal organiza- 
tion through the predominance of the national 
monarchies disappeared that sense of mutual ob- 
ligation which under the feudal regime had con- 
stituted an ethical bond between the different or- 
ders of society. What remained was the bare 
conception of irresponsible "sovereignty" consid- 
ered as a divinely implanted, absolute, unlimited, 
and indivisible prerogative of personal rule, the 
charter right of each dynasty to seek its own ag- 
grandizement, preponderance, and glory regard- 
less of all considerations of race, reason, or re- 
ligion. 

With such a conception of the nature of the 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 13 

state, the whole system of international relations 
was necessarily based upon military force. Cas- 
ually formed customs, usually the expression of 
superior power or of temporary expediency, sup- 
plemented by transitory alliances and enforced 
conventions, supplied the only rules that obtained 
general recognition. Until Grotius appealed to 
the ethical motive, and the treaties of Westphalia 
recognized the de jure rights of territorial sover- 
eignty, there was among the nations of Europe 
no semblance of public law which jurisprudence 
could recognize. But even after the Peace of 
Westphalia, the so-called "law of nations" was 
little more than a theoretical acceptance of the 
equal rights of autonomous sovereigns, each of 
whom could work his will without interference 
within his own domains, leaving to each ruler the 
unquestioned prerogative of dictating the religion 
of his own subjects, of taxing them, of arming 
them, and of making war with their united forces 
for his own advantage. In effect, the Peace of 
Westphalia, by rendering even petty princes abso- 
lute, permitted more than three hundred and sixty 
independent rulers to carry on the sanguinary 
game of war for plunder or conquest without re- 



14 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

straint; and all, left free to destroy one another, 
were thus entitled by public law, through war and 
diplomacy, to seek their fortunes with complete 
autonomy. Sovereignty, denned as "supreme 
power," regardless of any principle of right, was 
conceived to be the very essence of the state. It 
remained simply to discover by a trial of strength 
which power was in reality supreme. 

When in its moral awakening the Europe of 
the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of 
the nineteenth century began to think for itself, — 
or at least to follow the thinking of Locke, Mon- 
tesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, and others who sought 
to find the true foundations of the state in the 
conception of law based upon the nature and ne- 
cessities of men rather than upon dynastic power, 
— Europe found itself under the incubus of this 
sinister inheritance. 

Without a convulsion that would shake the 
whole of Europe to its foundations it was power- 
less to throw it off. Rousseau had in "Le contrat 
social" merely transferred the idea of sovereignty 
from the monarch to the people, but he had not 
essentially altered its character. It was still "su- 
preme power," still the "absolute, indivisible, and 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 15 

perpetual" thing which Jean Bodin, seeking to 
give royalty a philosophical pedestal to stand 
upon, had said it was. Inherent in the people, it 
was still the personification of all the public pow- 
ers ; and the volonte generate, the general will, re- 
gardless of its moral qualities, was for each sep- 
arate state, the unlimited, irresponsible source of 
law. 

When the French Revolution judged and con- 
demned the king, it was done as a sovereign act; 
and was, therefore, not permitted to be questioned 
by the rest of Europe. Was not sovereignty ab- 
solute ? Then it belonged to France. Was it not 
indivisible? Then it belonged to the French 
people. Was it not perpetual? Who, then, could 
ever take it away or in any way dispute it? And 
thus the volonte generate of one nation, in the per- 
son of the residuary legatee of the Revolution, Na- 
poleon Bonaparte, made emperor by the assent of 
the volonte generate of France, assumed to act as 
sovereign over the whole of Europe. 

There was no moment during the whole revolu- 
tionary period when sovereignty ceased to be con- 
ceived as unlimited supreme power. And thus 
the malign inheritance of Europe, in so far as it 



16 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

was affected by the Revolution, was essentially un- 
changed. Monarchy and democracy alike, with- 
out distinction, have regarded sovereignty merely 
as "supreme power," "absolute, indivisible, and 
perpetual." Thus it stands in the text-books of 
the law of nations. So many sovereignties, so 
many absolute autocrats. Being the sole sources 
of law, how can they be subject to law? And 
there being no law which they may not set aside, 
since it is but their creature, sovereign nations 
are irresponsible, and have no more to do with 
moral right or wrong than so many untamed ani- 
mals seeking to satisfy their appetites. The right 
to make war at will and to be answerable to no 
one, that was, and is, the accepted doctrine of the 
old Europe, which merely asserted itself anew in 
1914. 

This does not signify that it has never been 
contested. More than three hundred years ago, 
a now almost forgotten German jurist, though 
recognizing sovereignty as the foundation of the 
state, denned it as an attribute, not of the people 
as an unorganized mass, but of a "body politic" 
organized for the promotion of justice, deriving its 
authority as a moral entity from the rights of its 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 17 

constituent members, whom it is organized to 
protect against wrong, and therefore from its 
very nature charged with mutual rights and 
obligations. 

Here is pictured no irresponsible autocrat 
clothed with supreme power, but a responsible 
member of a family of nations, fitted to unite with 
other members of that family in extending over 
the whole earth the reign of law and justice, but 
above all required by the very nature and pur- 
pose of its authority to conduct itself in all its 
relations, outward and inward, in accordance with 
the principles from which its authority as an 
organ of justice is derived. Founded upon the 
inherent rights of persons, and existing for their 
protection, a state in this sense can arrogate to it- 
self no sovereign right of conquest, whatever its 
power may be. The only authority it can claim 
is authority to defend the rights and interests thus 
committed to its guardianship. As a moral en- 
tity — for this is what Althusius taught that a 
state founded on rights necessarily is — it should 
be ready to apply the principles of justice and 
equity in its dealings with other states. 

Thus understood, sovereignty is not merely a 



18 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

name for supreme power. It is a right inherent 
in a free and independent group of human beings, 
possessing a definite territory, to form and main- 
tain a government. Reduced to its simplest 
terms, it is the right of a free community to pro- 
vide for self-regulation and to maintain its own 
existence. Whatever is necessary to that, and 
nothing more, is included in this conception of the 
state. Only in an incidental manner does it be- 
long to the category of might. In its essential 
attributes it belongs to the category of right. 

Were this conception of sovereignty generally 
accepted, justice and equity would not halt at the 
frontiers of a nation. The right of war would 
exist, but it would not be, as the old Europe has 
universally recognized it to be, a virtually unlim- 
ited right. There could be, under this conception, 
no permanently subject peoples. There could be 
no world dominion. There could be no legal 
schemes of conquest. War would mean the pun- 
ishment of offenders against the law of nations, 
the suppression of anarchy and brigandage, re- 
sistance to the ambitions of the conqueror. 

But the old Europe has never been disposed to 
give to sovereignty that meaning. It could not 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 19 

do so while it was identified with royal legitimacy. 
That principle triumphed a hundred years ago in 
the Congress of Vienna, which strove to neutralize 
the effects of the French Revolution by ending 
forever the sovereignty of the people. Then fol- 
lowed the effort to establish Europe firmly upon 
the principles of absolutism by crushing out all 
constitutional aspirations. To accomplish this 
the unlimited right of war was necessary, for 
without armed intervention by the allied sover- 
eigns the task was hopeless. Legitimacy was to 
be everywhere sustained by the Holy Alliance. 
Wherever a state adopted a constitution, the pow- 
ers bound themselves at the Conference of Trop- 
pau, "if need be by arms, to bring back the 
guilty state into the bosom of the Alliance." 

The unlimited right of a sovereign state to make 
war for any reason it considered sufficient, or for 
no reason at all, thus seemed to be written into 
the public law of Europe. That was the un- 
hallowed inheritance which even modern democ- 
racies have received from absolutism. Being 
entitled to all the prerogatives of sovereignty as 
historically understood, they have not repudiated 
the heritage. And thus they have tacitly ac- 



20 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

cepted the evil principle of the despotisms against 
whose iniquities they have rebelled, and whose 
pernicious influence they were struggling to throw 
off. 

In the call for the first Hague Conference "all 
questions concerning the political relation of 
states" were expressly excluded from the deliber- 
ations of the conference. In that, and in the 
second conference, rules were laid down regard- 
ing the manner of conducting war, both on land 
and sea, but nowhere were any regulations pre- 
scribed regarding the causes or conditions of 
declaring war that were to be considered legal or 
illegal, just or unjust. As one of the best ac- 
credited authorities on the subject says: 

Theoretically, international law ought to determine the 
causes for which war can be justly undertaken; in other 
words, it ought to mark out as plainly as municipal law 
what constitutes a wrong for which a remedy may be 
sought at law. It might also not unreasonably go on to 
discourage the commission of wrongs by investing a state 
seeking redress with special rights, and by subjecting a 
wrong-doer to special disabilities. 

In fact, however, it does nothing of the kind. 
The reason is not merely that there would be no 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 21 

means except war for enforcing such rules, — for 
that would apply equally to the regulations con- 
cerning the manner of conducting war that have 
been explicitly laid down, — but because no sov- 
ereign state has thus far been disposed to pledge 
itself not to engage in war except under condi- 
tions that in harmony with its own principles 
of legislation would be considered just. "Hence 
both parties in every war are regarded as being in 
an identical position, and consequently possessed 
of equal rights." Aggressor and victim alike, tri- 
umphant force and helpless innocence, these are 
held in equal honor by the public law of Europe 
as it now stands, and this law has been tacitly 
accepted by the whole "family of nations" ! 

It is upon this unlimited right to resort to war, 
and the consequent general irresponsibility in in- 
ternational relations, that the idea of neutrality 
reposes ; and yet neutrality is historically an im- 
mense step forward in the path of progress when 
compared with the Machiavellian doctrine that no 
opportunity for gain from the quarrels of others 
should be allowed to pass unutilized. In every 
war, Machiavelli declares, one side or the other 



22 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

will win, and the wise course for an intelligent 
prince to pursue is to join at the proper moment 
with the probable winner, whoever he may be, in 
order to be able to share with him the spoils of 
victory. 

The modern doctrine of neutrality, which con- 
siders war an unavoidable evil, is no doubt an 
amelioration of Machiavelli's policy; for, instead 
of widening the range of hostilities, its aims to 
narrow the area of conflict. It is inspired, how- 
ever, chiefly by the consideration that it is a na- 
tional right to avoid the infection of a pestilence 
which the neutral power has not caused and for 
which it is not responsible. So long as the bel- 
ligerents, who are conceded the privilege of mu- 
tual destruction, — but often with very unequal fa- 
cilities for engaging in the conflict, — do not too 
deeply offend the neutral states by their activities, 
powerful nations feel justified in standing silent 
and inactive while weak states are crushed into 
subjection and the laws of war, which they them- 
selves have helped to make, are violated. 

From a moral point of view this appears to be a 
strange proceeding for a member of the '" family 
of nations"; but it must be considered . that this 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 23 

is a family of a very peculiar kind. In it each 
member, by tacit consent, is believed to fulfil his 
whole duty by looking solely after his own inter- 
ests. Governments, it is held, are in each case re- 
sponsible to their own constituents for the preser- 
vation of the safety and well-being of the nations 
intrusted to their care, and consequently they can- 
not act with the freedom of a private person. 
They may not, therefore, incontinently plunge 
their people into war without reasons that involve 
the national interests. Until there is a better or- 
ganization of international relations, this condi- 
tion must continue ; but it is rapidly coming to be 
perceived that, if civilization is not to suffer ship- 
wreck, a better organization must be sought. 

Before attempting to find a basis for a revision 
of international relations it is necessary to consider 
how intimately national interests have become as- 
sociated with war. For a long time, all the in- 
terests of the state were regarded as personal to 
the sovereign. All its territory was his territory. 
All the property of the nation was his property, 
of which the people enjoyed only the usufruct. 
Even their persons and their lives were at his dis- 



24 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

posal, for they were in all respects his subjects. 

To-day the identity of the sovereign is changed, 
but not the conception of sovereignty. The peo- 
ple, standing in the place of the sovereign, claim 
the right of succession to all the royal preroga- 
tives. The national interests have become their 
interests. The appeal to their patriotism rests 
upon this ground. The power, gain, and glory 
of the state are represented to be theirs. Even 
where it has not entirely superseded the monarch, 
the nation believes itself to have entered into part- 
nership with him, and the people consider them- 
selves shareholders in the vast enterprise of ex- 
panding dominion. Even the beggar in the street 
is assured that it is his country; and, though 
ragged and hungry, he takes a pride in his pro- 
prietorship. 

It is the nation's territory, industry, commerce, 
and prestige that are now in question. And gov- 
ernment, even the government of the people, is no 
longer merely protective. It enters into every 
kind of business, owns railways, steamship lines, 
manufactories, everything involving the life and 
prosperity of the people. The state has become 
an economic as well as a political organ of society. 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 25 

The modern national state is, in fact, a stupend- 
ous and autonomous business corporation, the 
most portentous and the most lawless business 
trust, and views other nations as its business 
rivals, aiming at the control of foreign markets, 
and of the sources of raw materials wherever 
they may exist. And these vast economic entities, 
with their vision fixed on gain, combine not only 
the command of armies and navies, but absolute 
freedom from effective legal restriction with im- 
mensely concentrated wealth such as the kings 
and emperors of the past never had at their dis- 
posal. 

Whatever, from an internal and social point of 
view, the merits or defects of the extension of state 
functions may be, they are bristling with possi- 
bilities of war, and when modern nations engage 
in it, it is no longer a dynastic adventure, but a 
people's war. Commanding the strength and re- 
sources of a whole people, and acting for its al- 
leged interests, these great economic corporations 
are fitted for aggression as well as for defense. 
If they were subject to the usual laws of business 
that prevail in the regulation of private enter- 
prises within their own borders, in accordance 



26 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

with the principles they apply at home, these 
mailed and armed knights of trade might not be 
dangerous to the world's peace; but they are not 
subject to these, or to any such regulations. They 
recognize no law which they feel themselves 
obliged to obey. Inheriting by tradition from the 
past alleged rights of absolute sovereignty, and 
equipped with military forces on land and sea, 
they are engaged in a struggle for supremacy 
which they would not for a moment permit within 
their own legal jurisdiction. Were a similar or- 
ganization formed within their own borders, 
adopting as its principles of action the privileges 
usually claimed by sovereign states, it would be 
promptly and ruthlessly suppressed as a danger- 
ous outlaw. 

This statement implies no reflection upon any 
particular nation, for all to some extent share in 
the responsibility. What is here condemned as 
essentially unsocial and anarchic is the indiffer- 
ence of these great national economic corporations 
to one another's rights, and above all the absence 
in the law of nations, as it is now understood, of 
accepted regulations such as the lesser constituent 
elements of the business world are required by 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 27 

these very states to obey under their authority. If 
civilization is to endure, and nations are not to 
become privileged highway robbers on the land 
and pirates on the sea, this part of the law of na- 
tions must be revised not only as respects the 
rules of war, but the rules of peace. In so far as 
a nation is a business entity it should be governed 
by the same principles in its dealings with other 
nations as civilized states apply to business within 
their own limits. But international law has not 
yet reached the stage of formal development where 
this is recognized. It is still under the influence 
of the inherited customs of the past, the baneful 
fiction of an absolute sovereign prerogative. Just 
as Christendom found that it was not in fact so 
organized as to restrain the Hun and the Tartar, 
so we are discovering that civilization is not yet 
so organized as to restrain their modern counter- 
parts. So long as international business is con- 
trolled by an absolute conception of sovereignty, 
and sustained by military force, there will be no 
prospect of either peace or equity in the world. 

Let us not here undertake to speak of remedies. 
We must first comprehend the nature of the situ- 



28 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

ation. Nor should we here attempt to apportion 
blame, which would only end in bitter controversy. 
If the evil is in the system, then it is the system 
that must be changed ; and it will be time enough 
to inquire how to change it and to pronounce 
specific condemnations when we know what 
change is required and who may refuse to par- 
ticipate in making it. 

Undoubtedly, we have all of us been cherishing 
illusions. Let us, then, endeavor to dissipate 
them. 

We have assumed that in some mystical manner 
progress is inherent in society ; that it is necessarily 
produced by natural laws ; that the mere duration 
of time carries us forward to perfection ; and that 
the older civilization becomes, the wiser it tends 
to be. Trusting to these baseless generalities, we 
have in a spirit of optimism forgotten that we have 
duties to perform, renunciations to make, and 
sacrifices to offer if the state, or the so-called 
society of states, is to prosper. We have formed 
the habit of looking to the state as a source of 
personal benefit to ourselves, which calls for only 
the smallest contributions from us in return. We 
have made exorbitant demands upon it, as undis- 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 29 

ciplined children extort privileges from over-in- 
dulgent parents. We have wanted better wages, 
better prices for our commodities, better oppor- 
tunities of trade, better conditions of life, free 
schools, free books, playgrounds, public provi- 
sions of every kind at the expense of the state. In 
order to obtain these benefits, some have desired 
that the state should become omnipotent, seeking 
to augment its resources by despoiling the rich 
within its limits, and exploiting or even conquer- 
ing foreign territory wrested from other peoples, 
in the belief that this would render it easier to 
satisfy their desires, and through its increased 
power become the dispenser of happiness. When 
for this purpose armies and navies have been re- 
quired, it has usually been easy to obtain them; 
for may not the state, being a sovereign power, 
do all things necessary for its own interest? 
Thus men's consciences have been put to rest. 

This tendency of modern states and the sudden 
revelation of its meaning have been forcibly ex- 
pressed by a recent writer. He says: 

A few more teasings, a few more pistols held at the 
head of the state, and a scheme, we were expecting, would 
be forthcoming that would render us all happy in spite 



30 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

of ourselves. Then, one fine morning in August, there 
came a rude awakening. We got a message from the 
state couched in language we had never heard before. "I 
require you," said the state, "to place your property and 
your lives at my service. Now, and for some time to 
come, I give nothing, but ask for everything. Arm your- 
selves for my defense. Give me your sons, and be will- 
ing that they should die for me. Repay what you owe 
me. My turn has come." 

And thus Europe is now called upon to pay the 
debt its theory of the state and of the state's om- 
nipotence has incurred. 

We have also trusted blindly to the process of 
social evolution. Industrialism and commerce, 
we have assumed, will automatically bring in a 
new era. Before it militarism, the grim relic of 
the old regime, will disappear. There will soon 
be no need for fighting. When all the world 
turns to industry, as it will, wars will cease. 
Commerce will cement the nations together and 
create a perfect solidarity of interests. 

But the present war has thrown a new light 
on the relations of militarism and industry. 
Forty years ago, Herbert Spencer, with his strong 
proclivity for brilliant generalization, fancied 
that the age of militarism was soon to be super- 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 31 

seded by an age of universal industrialism. He 
described their opposite polities, the conditions of 
the gradual transition, and the final triumph of 
industry over militancy. But what do we now 
behold? Has militarism diminished with the 
growth of industry? Has not militarism simply 
become more titanic and even more demoniacal by 
the aid of industry, until war has become the most 
stupendous problem of modern mechanics ? And 
now we see militarism wholly absorbing industry, 
claiming all its resources, and even organizing 
and commanding it. 

And why is this? It is because the state as a 
business corporation is employing military force 
as its advance agent, struggling for the control of 
markets and resources, and the command of new 
peoples who are to feed and move the awful en- 
ginery of war. 

And this condition of the world is the logical 
outcome of the inherited theory of the state. This 
fact is now beginning to be recognized, and re- 
cently there has been much said regarding impe- 
rialism and democracy, often assuming that the 
mere internal form of government alone is re- 
sponsible for the international situation in Eu- 



32 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

rope. But it is not the form, it is the spirit, and 
above all the postulates, of government that are 
at fault. If democracies may act according to 
their "good pleasure," if the mere power of ma- 
jorities is to rule without restraint, if there are 
no sacred and controlling principles of action, in 
what respect is a multiple sovereign superior to a 
single autocrat ? If the private greed of a people 
is sustained by the pretensions of absolutism in 
international affairs, democracy itself becomes im- 
perial, without accepting the principles of equity 
which have sometimes given dignity to the im- 
perial idea. In truth, the most dangerous con- 
ceivable enemy to peace and justice would be a 
group of competitive democracies delirious with 
unsatisfied desires. 

If there is to be a new Europe, it must not look 
for new forms of organization so much as for a 
new spirit of action. It must renounce altogether 
its evil heritage. It must reconstruct its theory 
of the state as an absolute autonomous entity. 
If the state continues to be a business corporation, 
as it probably in some sense will, then it must 
abandon the conception of sovereignty as an un- 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 33 

limited right to act in any way it pleases under 
the cover of national interests and necessity. It 
must consent to be governed by ethical principles. 
It must not demand something for nothing, it must 
not make its power the measure of its action, it 
must not put its interests above its obligations. 
It may plead them, it may argue them, and it may 
use its business advantages justly to enforce them ; 
but it may not threaten the life or appropriate the 
property of its neighbors or insist upon controlling 
them on its own terms. It may display its wares, 
proclaim their excellence, fix its own prices, buy 
and sell where it finds its advantage ; but it must 
not bring to bear a machine-gun as a means of 
persuasion upon its rival across the street. 

No one can make a thorough and impartial in- 
quiry into the causes of the present European 
conflict without perceiving that their roots run 
deep into the soil of trade rivalry. Beneath the 
apparent political antagonisms are the economic 
aspirations that have produced them. In the 
light of history we can no longer accept the doc- 
trine that industrialism and commercialism by a 
process of natural evolution automatically super- 
sede militarism. On the contrary, we perceive 



34 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

that militarism on the one hand, and industry 
and commerce on the other, are at present part- 
ners rather than antagonists. They are differ- 
ent, but closely associated, activities of modern 
business policy as conducted by the state. If 
there were no economic questions involved, the 
conflict of nationalities could soon be ended. 
Modern wars are primarily trade wars. Modern 
armies and navies are not maintained for the 
purpose of ruthlessly taking human life or of 
covering rulers with glory. They are, on the one 
hand, armed guardians of economic advantages 
already possessed; and, on the other, agents of 
intended future depredation, gradually organ- 
ized for purposes alleged to be innocent, and at 
what is esteemed the auspicious moment des- 
patched upon their mission of aggression. In- 
ternational misunderstandings are readily ad- 
justed where there is the will to adjust them ; but 
against the deliberately formed policies of na- 
tional business expansion — the reaching out for 
new territory, increased population, war indem- 
nities, coaling stations, trade monopolies, control 
of markets, supplies of raw materials, and advan- 
tageous treaty privileges, to be procured under the 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 35 

shadow of the sword — there is no defense except 
the power to thwart or obstruct them by armed 
resistance. 

We must, then, definitely abandon the thesis 
that industrialism is essentially pacific, and will 
eventually automatically disband armies and 
navies, and thus put an end to war. On the con- 
trary, modern armies and navies are the result 
of trade rivalry, and are justified to those who 
support them on the ground that there are na- 
tional interests to be defended or advantages to be 
attained by their existence. So long as even one 
powerful nation retains its heritage of evil and in- 
sists that it may employ its armies or navies ag- 
gressively as an agency in its national business; 
so long, to put the matter directly, as the nations 
must buy and sell, travel and exchange, negotiate 
and deliver, with bayonets at their breasts, so 
long defensive armies and navies will be neces- 
sary, and the battle for civilization must go on. 

Strange as it may seem, it is not the poorest 
nations, but the richest, where discontent is deep- 
est and most widespread. It is the great powers 
that are most inclined to war, and are most fully 
prepared to make it; and the reason is not diffi- 



36 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

cult to discern. The greater the state the greater 
its ambitions. It is easily within the grasp of 
five or six great powers to secure the permanent 
peace of the world, and, far more important than 
that, to secure the observance of just laws by all 
nations. But, unfortunately, governments, feel- 
ing themselves charged with the duty of augment- 
ing the resources of the state, find no limit to their 
ambitions except in their powers of action, which 
are great. The whole future of the world has in 
the past virtually lain in the hands of a small 
number of men, not all of them monarchs, but the 
recognized leaders of public thought and action 
in their respective nations. 

This order of things is less likely to continue 
in the future than at any time in the past. Far 
less frequently than in former times will individ- 
ual men shape the destinies of nations. And this 
is an important augury for the new Europe. 
Only a few men, and they but temporarily, framed 
and executed the policies that have, for example, 
created the British Empire. As the historian 
Seeley said, "We have conquered half the world 
in a fit of absence of mind." And in all this 
process the British people have never been con- 



EUROPE'S HERITAGE OF EVIL 37 

suited, just as the German people were not con- 
sulted in the two critical moments of their exist- 
ence; for in the past peoples were seldom con- 
sulted regarding their national destiny. But that 
time has passed forever. Henceforth no intelli- 
gent people will ever be led into the shambles of 
aggressive warfare without being consulted. 
That is the first mark of difference that will 
distinguish the new Europe from the old. And, 
being consulted, will they not ask with increas- 
ing earnestness why nations cannot conduct their 
business as the state generally requires private 
business to be conducted, in accordance with 
reasonable rules of procedure? Many negative 
answers will, no doubt, be given, for governments 
are tenacious of their traditions ; but, nevertheless, 
there will be a general revision of the inherited 
conception of the nature of the state, and a percep- 
tion that world dominion is not the prerogative of 
any single nation. States, like individual men, 
must admit their responsibilities to one another, 
accept the obligation to obey just and equal laws 
and take their respective places in the society of 
states in a spirit of loyalty to civilization as a 
human and not an exclusively national ideal. 



CHAPTER II 
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 

DESPITE the heritage of evil in the absolute 
conception of the state and the relations be- 
tween states ; and, in truth, on account of it, men 
of reflective habits of mind have devoted much at- 
tention to the ideas that ought to prevail when, 
either in the course of progressive evolution or at 
some critical period of readjustment, the oppor- 
tunity for amelioration may exist. 

At the very outset, however, we are confronted 
with the question how far the thought and pur- 
pose of man can affect such vast issues as social, 
political, and international organization. Judg- 
ing by the past, we should, perhaps, be led to con- 
clude, that mere theories have, on the whole, very 
little to do with the mass action of mankind, and 
that such action is almost universally determined 
by the blind instincts and irresistible appetites of 
men rather than by reason; with the result that 
it is useless to expect that anything of national 

38 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 39 

magnitude will happen simply because it is rea- 
sonable or that international affairs will ever cease 
to be more unreasonable than they have been in 
the past. 

If there were no important change in the human 
units that make up the populations of what we 
call the civilized nations of the world, this hope- 
less prospect might be justified; but, in fact, a 
very radical change has occurred in these later 
decades. It consists in an ever-widening com- 
mon consciousness regarding national and inter- 
national affairs. Great world events, portrayed 
in terms generally intelligible, and brought home 
to the masses of mankind everywhere, have awak- 
ened the intelligence of the common man as it has 
never been aroused before. In the humblest 
walks of life men are now discussing difficult 
questions of jurisprudence and diplomacy in the 
light of stirring events of world-wide significance, 
and they are asking one another, What is to be- 
come of civilization? Will it perish in the con- 
flict of national interests, or will it enter upon a 
new era of development? 

Justice, peace, cooperation, culture — all these 
seem to be imperiled by national antagonisms; 



40 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

and yet they are aspirations that all nations pro- 
fess to entertain. How may they be realized? 
By intelligent organization, no doubt ; but it must 
be of a more thorough kind and on a larger scale 
than has ever before been attempted. It cannot 
stop at the national boundaries; it must include 
the whole family of man. 

The tragic character of the present world-con- 
flict has greatly stimulated thought in this direc- 
tion, but no plan of international organization has 
thus far been proposed which has met with uni- 
versal approbation as likely to prove practicable. 
It is an easy task to outline an international con- 
stitution based upon the principle of federation; 
but all schemes of this kind when applied to prac- 
tice are confronted with the pretensions of abso- 
lute sovereignty, and the indisposition on the part 
of governments to surrender any of their prerog- 
atives. 

Before great progress can be made in harmon- 
izing national interests it will be necessary to re- 
consider, in the light of modern knowledge and 
experience, the true nature of the state and by a 
readjustment of opinions upon that subject pre- 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 41 

pare the way for a change in the attitude of na- 
tions toward one another. 

The present is an unusually auspicious moment 
for reflection upon this subject, for in the sanguin- 
ary drama now enacting we are witnessing the 
demonstration of the utter impracticability of real- 
izing any of the international ideals if nations, 
having become economic corporations, are to con- 
tend with one another for the possession of the 
earth upon the assumption that superior military 
power is the source of rightful authority. 

In so far as that idea is merely a historical in- 
heritance coming down to us through the tacit ac- 
ceptance of unfounded pretentions, we may very 
readily abandon it, as marking a stage of social 
evolution which we have left behind us. But 
the case is not so simple. We find that all in- 
ternational ideals are openly challenged and re- 
pudiated. We are told that, rightly conceived, 
the state is incapable of compromise; that it is a 
vehicle of authority and of culture that cannot, 
even if it would, refuse to execute its lofty mission 
of expansion and transformation. 

The truth is that the battle between opposing 
theories of the state has not yet been fought out. 



42 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

What is the purpose of the state? Does it exist 
for the individual person, as democracy contends, 
or does the individual person exist for the state, 
as absolutism asserts ? 

Deep down beneath all the superficial drift of 
international questions is a problem in philoso- 
phy, upon the solution of which there is so far no 
agreement. 

As a question of philosophy the opposing types 
of conception regarding the nature of the state 
may, perhaps, be best illustrated by comparing the 
theories of Kant and Hegel, the one emphasizing 
the freedom, development, and responsibility of 
the individual man, the other the power, the glory, 
and the divinity of the state. 

At the end of the eighteenth century the idea 
of dynastic proprietorship was already vanishing, 
and the revolutionary movement, begun in Amer- 
ica and continued in France and throughout Eu- 
rope, demanded a reconstruction of the idea of 
government. At that time the pretensions of royal 
absolutism were challenged as they had never 
been before. Then followed an effort at recon- 
struction, and, more than any other of that gen- 
eration, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 43 

there is a truly philosophic foundation for the ex- 
istence and authority of the state as a human in- 
stitution. 

It is Kant who best marks the transition to 
distinctively modern thought not only on account 
of his having lived in the period of revolt against 
absolutism, but on account of the place he assigns 
to man as a factor in history. To his mind the 
great necessity for man is freedom. All the forces 
of humanity are locked up in the possibilities of 
the individual being. The great problem of so- 
ciety is to release the free activity of human fac- 
ulties. No one had ever so fully realized the in- 
herent dignity of personality, or urged so strongly 
its extrication from the mechanism of dynamic 
process. The authority that should govern per- 
sons, he thinks, should not come from without, 
either from nature on the one hand or the state 
on the other. The reason for the state is to be 
found in the nature of man as a self-determining, 
rational, and responsible being. Personality is 
not a means to an end; it is an end in itself, and 
therefore should not be treated as a mere thing, 
or made the creature, the instrument, or the vic- 
tim of arbitrary force. 



44 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Government, then, should be organized for hu- 
man service and not merely for the service of a 
class to the detriment of another class, but for 
society as a whole. It must, no doubt, be terri- 
torial, and therefore circumscribed in its jurisdic- 
tion; that is, there may be, and in fact must be, 
many governments but they should all have the 
same purpose. The state in its proper sense is a 
structure of moral order, the creation of self- 
conscious reason, aiming at the establishment of 
an external support of human rights by an out- 
ward defense of an inner principle. It is to be 
sharply distinguished from society, which is a nat- 
ural product. In its perfection it would be the 
external harmony of the activities resulting from 
personal freedom. The business of government, 
therefore, is to remove the hindrances to freedom, 
which are found in the love of power, of glory, 
and of gain, motives engendered by the natural 
instincts which man shares with the lower 
animals. 

Such a conception appears at first sight to be 
not only cosmopolitan, but anti-national. Cos- 
mopolitan it undoubtedly is, and therein lies the 
possibility of ultimately realizing the idea of a 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 45 

true society of states; but it is not anti-national 
in the sense of denying the value and necessity 
of the nation. What it aims at is the extension 
of local order until it becomes general order, by 
so conceiving the state as to allow of its coopera- 
tion with other states, either by federation, or 
some other correlation, with the purpose of insur- 
ing universal harmony and, therefore, permanent 
peace. 

But in order to reach this result Kant holds that 
the "holy and inviolable law of reason" must tri- 
umph over the impulses of the natural man not 
by military force, for freedom and violence are 
incompatible, but by the gradual evolution of 
mankind through the action of rational intelli- 
gence. 

Here is presented, no doubt, a conception of 
the state which renders internationalism possible 
without the destruction of nationalism. But we 
find in Kant only the beginning of a complete po- 
litical philosophy, for the reason that he had not 
seen his own idea of personality as the basis of 
political organization anywhere effectively worked 
out. He had not witnessed the development of 
constitutionalism, which was only just asserting 



46 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

itself, and his conservative spirit in matters prac- 
tical was rudely shocked by the enormities of the 
French Revolution. Yet he perceived that it was 
upon the inherent rights of the individual man 
that the state must be founded if despotism was 
to be abolished. But he also apprehended the 
deeper truth that rights without duties cannot be 
sustained, and he therefore laid the principal 
stress upon duty — duty to the state and duty to 
all mankind. 

While Kant's conception of the state was mak- 
ing practical progress in other parts of the world, 
his Fatherland was harried by invasion, subju- 
gated by conquest, and in the Napoleonic domina- 
tion a new imperialism was holding all conti- 
nental Europe in its grasp. Fichte applied the 
Kantian conception of duty to the fallen fortunes 
of the Prussian state, for a strong doctrine of 
nationalism became the necessity of the hour. 
But it was Hegel, after liberation had been 
achieved, who, determined to philosophize every- 
thing, made the state the shrine of the indwelling 
absolute, and for the cosmopolitanism of Kant 
was substituted a theory of the state which pro- 
claimed it an organ of divine action, identified 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 47 

patriotism with religion, and rendered the separ- 
ate nationalities as unapproachable for purposes 
of rational understanding as the planets in the 
solar system. 

For Hegel the individual man is nothing in 
himself. Whatever he has of moral personality 
is the creation of the state. It is true that in his 
writings Hegel begins with personal conscious- 
ness as a fundamental fact in the manner of 
Kant ; but in his fully developed philosophy, after 
he has assumed the task of glorifying the state, 
he makes of it the only vehicle through which 
the absolute reaches humanity, and he always 
means by it the Prussian state, — the Prussian 
state, as Haym has said, as it existed in 1821, 
when Hegel wrote. 

But this was a necessary corollary of Hegel's 
conception of history as immanent reason. It was 
idle, he thought, to speak of what a state "ought 
to be." Being an incarnation of the absolute, 
it is what it is, and cannot be other than it is. It 
is right in all it does. All changes are divine 
acts. The individual man must take his orders 
from the state, because it alone has the right to 
command. The state being an embodiment of 



48 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

the absolute, it is foolish to try to make constitu- 
tions, as if we had any right of choice. Parlia- 
ments are only mediating bodies, which should 
take their directions from the permanent ruler 
in order to enlighten the masses as to how they 
are to execute these orders. The state is an or- 
ganism in which every constituent part is sub- 
ject to the will of the whole. But as this unity 
is not found in society as a whole, it must be 
sought in the will of a dominant person, the mon- 
arch, through whom the absolute speaks. And 
thus the philosopher sinks at last into the syco- 
phant, crowning his system with the dogma of 
divine right, and ending with the adulation of a 
notoriously weak and reactionary king. 

Evidently, if all states are like this, — and this is 
intended as a theory of the state in the abstract, — 
there can be no restraint upon the purpose of the 
monarch. He is absolute, and all states are 
absolute. There being no law but their own will, 
there can be no such thing as international law; 
and, as the state's omnipotence includes the un- 
limited right of making war at the will of the 
sovereign, there cannot be a permanent peace. 
Such a condition is an "empty dream." It is 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 49 

through war that the absolute carries forward the 
work of history. 

Almost with unanimity, after being for a time 
under the spell of Hegel's speculations, some 
decades ago philosophers abandoned absolutism, 
and raised the cry, "Back to Kant!" In the 
philosophy of the state, however, Hegel still ex- 
erts an influence. The picture of it as a self- 
subsisting and dominant power serves well the de- 
signs of imperial ambition. Religion, war, and 
further domination all seem to be reconciled by 
the assertion that the individual man exists for 
the state, and that the state is not founded on the 
rights of the individual man. 

Hence there is to-day a contest between these 
opposing conceptions — a contest upon the decision 
of which the future of international relations 
throughout the world will depend. If, as Kant's 
theory assumes, law is the formulation of justice 
and equity, resulting from a consensus of social 
needs interpreted in the light of reason, of which 
the state is an expression, then there is law for 
states as well as for individual men. If, on the 
contrary, law is a sovereign decree emanating 
from a dominant will regardless of limitations, 



50 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

there can be no law for states until such a supe- 
rior will is established over them. 



Both ideas have been worked out in the devel- 
opment of modern states. Some have followed 
the absolutist theory even in their internal or- 
ganization; and in these authority without re- 
striction emanates from a superior, an individual 
ruler or a governing class. In others authority 
proceeds from the constituents of the state under 
definite forms of limitation, in which checks upon 
the pretensions of absolute sovereignty are embod- 
ied in the very structure of government. None 
but states of the latter kind are truly constitu- 
tional. They are by their very nature creations 
of law. They recognize the fact that whatever 
rightful authority there is in the world is derived 
from claims to justice antecedent to all legislation 
and inherent in personality. When all the re- 
sources of sophistry have been exhausted in try- 
ing to derive rights from power, — that is, to prove 
that might is right, — we shall be obliged to go 
back to Kant and admit that human personality 
as such is a source of claims to justice and equity, 
or we must confess that right and wrong are 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 51 

merely imaginary distinctions, and jurisprudence 
a system of purely mechanical ideas, 

It has been said that all men may have "inter- 
ests," but no one has any "rights" until govern- 
ment has accorded them by an act of legislation. 
In some technical sense this may be true, but in a 
broad human sense it is not true. If it were true, 
it would be absurd to fight for another man's 
rights. But all the progress the world has ever 
made, all that distinguishes civilization from bar- 
barism, springs from someone's sense of duty, 
which means simply the recognition of another 
man's right, and this is as real when it is denied 
as when it is conceded. 

Certainly these inherent rights do not belong to 
human beings in an isolated and non-social state, 
for men never existed in a non-social state. All 
men are members of a series and members of a 
group, and it is in these relations that they recog- 
nize their claims to justice and to equity, which 
remain the same whether they are granted or not. 

Thus the idea of law is a part of the mental 
furniture of every being capable of an act of re- 
flection. To say with Hegel — or with Austin, or 
with any legal positivist — that there is and can 



52 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

be no international law, because there is no in- 
ternational sovereign to decree it, is to define law 
by a mere accident and not by its essential nature, 
that is, by the fact that laws have sometimes, but 
certainly not generally, been issued as sovereign 
decrees. 

It is singular how this notion lingers. A 
modern disciple of Hegel, for example, argues 
thus: 

The whole of international law rests on the principle 
that treaties are to be observed. But behind all this there 
is the sheer fact of the separate individual Powers, each 
absolute in its limited area; so that, at bottom, the whole 
fabric of international rules and customs, is just an agree- 
ment of separate wills, and not an expression of a single 
general will. 

And he sees in this a reason why leagues and 
federations cannot have the quality of law, forget- 
ful of the fact that in all modern constitutional 
states every law of every legislative body is a re- 
sult arrived at by an agreement of separate wills 
expressed in the votes of the legislators. But if 
the separate wills of a congress or a parliament 
may formulate a law, why may not separate and 
independent -states formulate a law for the gov- 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 53 

ernment of their own conduct? And having 
pledged themselves to it, being law in the most 
perfect sense, are they not bound by it? 

There is, it must be admitted, an ineffaceable 
distinction between the nature of a state, even a 
constitutional state, and a human being. The 
state is the guardian of private rights and inter- 
ests. It acts for its constituents in a fiduciary 
capacity. It is, indeed, an "ark of safety" to 
which communities of men have committed the 
keeping of their lives and treasures on the troubled 
waters of an uncharted world. "It is the vehicle 
which carries the whole value of life." Further- 
more, it exists in a world of hostile forces. 
"In the world, right can only prevail through 
might." Therefore the state must be strong, 
and to be strong it must be armed, as the indi- 
vidual man under the protection of the state 
need not be. How otherwise can it fulfil its 
sacred trust? 

All this is true and of the first importance; but, 
while it justifies the possession of force by the 
state, it makes it very plain that the strength 
of the state is not an end in itself, but merely a 
means— an instrument for the protection of rights 



54 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

and interests intrusted to its care. The end of the 
state is, therefore, not aggression, or profit, or 
power, but justice. The primary reason for the 
existence of a government is that each citizen shall 
be protected in his rights. 

It is this that distinguishes the state from other 
forms of human association. Its function is 
primarily protective. Upon this foundation rest 
all its special and peculiar prerogatives. Here is 
the reason for its authority, but this is limited 
by the reason for its existence. Society has mani- 
fold functions, but they may be normally left to in- 
dividual and corporate enterprise within the 
state, which may be a complete and perfect "body 
politic" without them. On the other hand, these 
functions may be in part, and even to a great 
extent, taken over and performed by the state, 
but they are not necessary to its existence. They 
do, however, modify its character. When the 
state, in addition to its protective function, as- 
sumes those of industry, transportation, and com- 
merce, as the modern state sometimes does, it un- 
dergoes a radical transformation. It itself then 
becomes a business corporation, a rival, and a 
competitor in the world of trade. 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 55 

Now what is most important to consider is that, 
while this expansion of its functions profoundly 
changes the character of the state, it does not con- 
fer upon it any new authority. It does multiply 
and extend its interests, but it does not in any 
respect render the state absolute or endow it with 
unlimited right of command. Mere business can- 
not be regarded as a source of absolute sover- 
eignty. 

For constitutional states, therefore, — that is, 
for governments based upon the protection of 
human rights, and not upon some superhuman 
claim to authority, like that of the divine right of 
the monarch, — there is no logical ground for 
claiming sovereign rights in the absolutist sense. 
Such states are free and independent, but they 
do not represent the will to power. They repre- 
sent and embody the will to justice ; and the prin- 
ciples of justice are, ipso facto, their law of action. 
Everything violative of justice is for them usur- 
pation. They may commit acts of injustice, they 
may explain them, they may excuse them; but 
they cannot logically justify them. As an organ 
of justice the state exceeds its prerogatives when 
it is unjust. 



56 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Undoubtedly this implies that international law 
is self-subsistent. For constitutional states it ex- 
ists regardless of customs and conventions, and 
would be their law if no customs or conventions 
had ever existed, for its principles enter into their 
very purpose and structure. For them to deny 
these principles in their conduct would be to de- 
nature themselves. 

Written or unwritten, international law is ac- 
cepted by all constitutional states as binding upon 
them. By some, as in the United States, it is ex- 
pressly declared to be a part of the law of the land. 
Acceptance of it should be the condition of the 
recognition of a government; for in so far as a 
community of men does not admit its existence, it 
is not a state in any defensible sense. An aggre- 
gation of de facto forces it may be, but in so far 
as it is merely an embodiment of the will to power 
and not the will to justice, it falls below statehood 
and is merely a predatory band, an outlaw that 
deserves to be proscribed and refused a place in 
the society of states. 

In practice the specific rules of international 
law are established by a general consensus. They 
are sometimes inferred from custom and some- 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 57 

times defined in conventions; but these rules are 
admitted to be merely partial and tentative ef- 
forts to express in definite formulae what justice 
and equity demand. In this respect international 
law is comparable with science. As the man of 
science is engaged in a continuous effort to dis- 
cover and state truth, so the jurist and the states- 
man, in so far as they are really such, persistently 
seek to formulate the requirements of justice. In 
both cases the formulae arrived at may be plainly 
incomplete; but justice, like truth, is not a 
mere creation of the mind. It is an object of 
research and discovery; and as far as it is dis- 
covered and agreed upon it is obligatory, al- 
though our knowledge of it may still be incom- 
plete. 

It is, therefore, a solecism to speak of interna- 
tional law as "destroyed" or "non-existent," be- 
cause it is sometimes violated. It can never be 
destroyed. It will continue to reassert itself; and, 
as public order and state authority appear more 
necessary after a period of domestic anarchy than 
they ever did before, international law, after an 
orgy of violence and atrocity, appeals with new 
strength to the reason of mankind as something 



58 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

that possesses an inherent claim upon our re- 
spect and obedience. 

Although criminally violated, it is an error 
to suppose that international law has been wholly 
disregarded in the great European conflict. On 
the contrary, it has been recognized and appealed 
to as never before in human history. Never in 
any previous war have such efforts been put 
forth by belligerents to justify their own conduct, 
and to prove that their enemies have openly dis- 
regarded the principles of justice as well as the 
merely technical rules of warfare. The volumi- 
nous white, red, yellow, and other books published 
by the governments are eloquent tributes to the 
authority of international law, which they con- 
stantly -accuse their enemies of violating, and 
profess to appeal to as a body of rules that ought 
to be obeyed. In truth, the approval and dis- 
approval of their acts by the neutral nations are 
based almost entirely upon the conclusiveness or 
inconclusiveness of the evidence that these accusa- 
tions are true, and the weight of public condem- 
nation corresponds with the preponderance of 
guilt resulting from intentional disregard of the 
principles of justice. 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 59 

How trivial it is, then, to speak of interna- 
tional law as being of slight importance, and es- 
pecially to treat it as if it had no claims to the 
title of binding law because it does not have an 
immediate external sanction ! An ultimate sanc- 
tion it unquestionably has. If it were generally 
disregarded, it would involve the complete ruin 
of civilization. If, on the other hand, it were 
generally obeyed, if all the great powers, not to 
speak of the smaller ones, earnestly sought to 
carry out in all their relations with one another 
the principles for which they profess to stand, and 
which they endeavor to enforce within their own 
jurisdictions and demand that other governments 
should observe in respect to themselves, it would 
seem like a different world. 

Is it then not idle to pretend that international 
law has no sanction when obedience or disobedi- 
ence of its precepts carries such far-reaching con- 
sequences to mankind? In the present condi- 
tion of the world, as the rain falls alike on the 
just and on the unjust, even under municipal law 
the victims of unprovoked aggression often suf- 
fer while the guilty escape the penalty the state 
would impose upon them; but we do not on this 



60 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

account deny the existence of the law. Nor can 
it be said that no penalty is attached to the viola- 
tion of the law of nations. In general, besides 
its direct consequence of resentment and hostility 
on the part of the nation wronged, it should in- 
volve the general reprobation of mankind. And, 
in fact, the penalties for violations of interna- 
tional law are far more specifically apportioned 
and executed than we sometimes imagine. The 
perpetration of injustice by one state upon another 
invariably deteriorates its own citizenship and 
destroys within the body politic itself values far 
more precious than those obtained by an unjust 
war. "A state," it has been well said, "can do 
no wrong to another which is not equally, and 
even more, a wrong to itself." Regarded from 
a historical point of view, there are few projects 
of international depredation that have not brought 
terrific retributions; and, although law-abiding 
states have sometimes been subjected to infam- 
ous encroachments, it is a fact supported by sta- 
tistics that many small and inoffensive states, like 
Switzerland and Holland, demand lower taxes 
and borrow money at lower rates of interest than 
the imperial powers that have from time to time 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 61 

attempted to subjugate their neighbors, thereby 
sowing dragon's teeth of reprisal and revenge 
that exhaust populations and burden them with 
public debt. The cost of overgrown armies and 
navies and the far heavier cost of young life 
offered as a sacrifice to national pride and na- 
tional greed — are not these a penalty for dis- 
regarding a law of life written in the reason and 
the conscience of man? 

What, then, is law, if not that principle of self- 
regulation by which a being realizes the true end 
of its existence? Our statements of it may vary 
from time to time, for the perception of it de- 
pends upon the development of our intelligence. 
But it does not depend upon our will. It is in- 
herent in our being. It is manifested through our 
reason. It is confirmed through our experience. 
There is a law of nations as well as a law of in- 
dividual life, which we have only partly discov- 
ered, because we have not sought the highest 
good of all, but only the highest good of a limited 
number. But nature deals in universals. So 
long, therefore, as all nations, or even some na- 
tions, insist upon a right of territorial expansion 
at the expense of others; so long as they fail to 



62 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

recognize that, irrespective of size and strength, 
they are members of a community of jural equals ; 
so long as they claim that their will is law, so 
long war will be the ratio ultima, and prepara- 
tion for it the highest wisdom of statesmanship. 
If it is impossible to place confidence in leagues 
of peace, it is still less possible to confide our 
destinies to a league to enforce peace, if it is to 
be composed of powers that need themselves to be 
placed under guardians. The only league that 
could be trusted effectually to enforce peace would 
be one composed exclusively of states that are 
disposed to recognize the obligations of interna- 
tional law, and voluntarily to pledge themselves to 
protect and obey it. 

But, to speak plainly, peace is not in itself a 
human ideal. As long as it leaves unsolved the 
problems of justice, it is not even a desirable as- 
piration. It may even be repugnant to the moral 
sentiments of an enlightened conscience. It is 
to be desired only when it is the concomitant of 
realized social good, for it is in no sense an end in 
itself. Yet the word is not to be set aside as rep- 
resenting a mere negation, as if it were simply the 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 63 

absence of strife. Peace on earth would mean the 
liberation of human faculties for the highest and 
noblest achievements of which human nature is 
capable. It would mean a splendid efflorescence 
of art, literature, science, philosophy, and religion, 
in short, culture in its best sense, as the spon- 
taneous unfolding of the powers of personality. 

And when we consider what an absolutist state 
might do to repress human spontaneity, destroy 
the sense of personality, and render its own dog- 
mas definitive, we see what an incubus upon civi- 
lization it is capable of becoming. If the tend- 
ency to monopolize and direct for its own purposes 
all human energies in channels of its own devising 
were unrestrained, we should eventually have an 
official art, an official science, and an official 
literature that would be like iron shackles to the 
human mind. 

These things, being human, are essentially cos- 
mopolitan, and thrive best where international 
intercourse is least restrained. If, as the absolut- 
ist theory of the state assumes, a particular gov- 
ernment did, in reality, embody the indwelling 
absolute, the source and shaper of all intelligent 
existence, as Hegel would have it, would it even 



64 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

then have the right to dictate what language 
should be employed, what arts should be encour- 
aged, what forms they should take, and what 
purposes they should serve? What a narrow 
view it is to assume that any merely national 
culture is a world culture or that it has a right to 
impose itself upon recalcitrant peoples who have 
a culture of their own! Such an assumption is 
not only unphilosophical ; it is unhistorical. 
"Culture is not, and never can be, an inherent 
quality peculiar to a particular nation or lan- 
guage. It is the heritage of the whole human 
race, cherished, enriched, and transmitted by one 
generation to another, from one corner of the 
earth to another. Human languages are the ves- 
sels in which culture resides. No language has 
been a culture-language from the beginning, and 
none is incapable of becoming such in the end." 
Culture, in any true sense, cannot be made a na- 
tional monopoly. It is an affair of the human 
soul, and any vehicle of repression against which 
the soul is in revolt is doomed to defeat, or cul- 
ture will perish in the struggle. 

Here speak with voices that cannot be silenced 
and with pleadings that must be heard the sup- 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 65 

pressed nationalities, whole peoples smitten with 
the sword, torn up from their historic roots, and 
made to serve the narrow selfish purposes of 
dominant dynasties. It is useless to speak of 
peace while these enormities exist. How can peo- 
ples who, through mere numerical superiority 
and military power, have overwhelmed subject 
races, and by the menace of the sword forbid the 
use of native languages and the retention of his- 
toric memories, speak seriously of superior cul- 
ture? It is only by the power of persistence un- 
der conditions of perfect liberty that the superior- 
ity of a form of culture can vindicate itself, for 
that is for each nation the highest which is best 
suited to its powers of achievements; and when 
a dynastic ruler by violence strips a subject race 
of its spiritual inheritance, it reverses and de- 
stroys the process by which true culture is de- 
veloped. There is no people in the world who 
would not resist it if this procedure were prac- 
tised upon itself. 

A people, therefore, cannot fit itself for inter- 
national society or realize its own normal de- 
velopment as a state until it is ready to recognize 
the claims of personality. Where mixed races 



66 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

compose the population, and nationality is iden- 
tified with a dominant race, there can be no true 
national unity, because there is no spirit of co- 
operation. On the other hand, it has been shown 
by the experience of Switzerland and the United 
States that different races may coexist in the same 
nation without in the slightest degree destroying 
their personal freedom, and that they may co- 
operate together successfully in the organization 
of liberty. Many nations may still be unripe for 
this higher development of nationality, and the 
contests for race segregation and race domina- 
tion may still continue; but the obstacle to har- 
mony does not proceed from the essential nature 
of the state. It consists rather in the arrest of 
political evolution at a stage where true state- 
hood has not yet been achieved; for a nation 
organized merely for power, for conquest, for 
world dominion, and not for justice, is not yet 
a state in the proper meaning of the word, but 
an unsocial and anarchical survival of primi- 
tive despotism. 

The complete realization of international 
ideals must, therefore, wait on further political 
evolution. But they are not wholly dependent 



INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 67 

on purely speculative thought. They are closely 
intertwined with practical experience. They 
gain new strength from every new disillusion- 
ment regarding the value and expediency of 
schemes of conquest and the effort to secure so- 
cial prosperity by military force. We have, 
therefore, to take into account existing realities. 
No more than the old will the new Europe be 
a mere structure of thought. It is materially 
shaping itself now before our eyes. It is being 
forged and fashioned amid the smoke and flame 
and torture of battle. It is to be determined not 
only by what men love and desire, but also by 
what they hate and by what they recoil from in 
horror. Its battle-cry is: "Never again! 
Never again!" Thrones may be shaken or they 
may endure; but out of the anguish, the disil- 
lusionment, and the fading of iridescent dreams 
the new Europe will come forth chastened, re- 
constituted, and redeemed. 



CHAPTER III 
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 

IN" the discussion of international questions it 
is a common oversight to lay the principal 
stress on political organization, to the neglect of 
economic facts and aspirations. It is evident 
that if all nations were living under a truly con- 
stitutional regime and were disposed to apply the 
principles of constitutional states in their deal- 
ings with one another, it would not be difficult to 
establish a world organization with a settled code 
of law, a court of arbitral justice, and perhaps a 
council of conciliation to propose methods of ad- 
justing controversies arising from a conflict of 
national policies. But such an organization 
would provide only a set of institutions. It would 
not reach the national motives that move the 
world to action. 

Among the causes of conflict the most diffi- 
cult to control are the economic motives ; for it is 

68 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 69 

these that are at present the most influential in 
determining the ambitions of nations, which are 
not merely "bodies politic," but economic cor- 
porations, seeking to acquire and possess the 
resources of the world. Regarded from this 
point of view, the external aim of national exist- 
ence is efficiency rather than justice. Its pur- 
pose is not alone the protection of rights, but 
the augmentation of power. As long as the em- 
ployment of military force as an auxiliary of in- 
dustry and trade seems to the great powers more 
advantageous than peaceable cooperation in the 
utilization of the earth's resources, war will ap- 
pear to be a natural, and to some a justifiable, 
method of national development. 

Modern imperialism is, in fact, far more ac- 
tuated by economic than by political motives. 
Politically, imperialism is merely a dynastic in- 
terest; but economically, it is made to appear 
that territorial expansion and extended domina- 
tion are in the people's interest. In this repre- 
sentation there are, however, two abuses of the 
people's confidence: for, while a few special inter- 
ests may profit by an imperial policy, the aver- 
age person is not rendered richer or happier by 



70 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

imperial triumphs; and, if he were, it would still 
be a criminal act to seduce a people into partner- 
ship in a policy of plunder on the ground that 
advantages may be obtained for them through 
the power of the state which could not be pro- 
cured by private means. When a government 
embarks upon a policy of imperial aggression, 
it virtually says to the nation, "Provide us with 
the necessary power, and we shall win for you in- 
creased advantages in which you will all share." 
A people thus deluded are the victims not only 
of deception, but of corruption. By becoming 
shareholders in a joint-stock operation, the ob- 
ject of which is illicit gain, they furnish the cap- 
ital for a predatory enterprise, only to discover in 
the end that they do not share in its fruits even 
when these are obtained by conquests and annexa- 
tions. On the contrary, they find themselves 
burdened with public debt, impoverished by the 
neglect of their business, and saddened by the 
loss of their sons killed or maimed in battle. It 
may well be doubted if, when the balance is 
struck, the average person in any nation, though 
victorious in war, has on the whole been to any 
important extent enriched by imperial aggres- 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 71 

sion. New territory may have been obtained, new 
accessions may have been made to the mass of 
the population, wider political control may have 
been acquired, but rarely, if ever, has the sum 
of happiness been thus increased. 

To most civilized peoples the thought of ag- 
gressive war for purposes of gain, involving as 
it necessarily does every variety of crime, — rob- 
bery, murder, outrage, and sacrilege,— is revolt- 
ing to the conscience and repellent to intelligence; 
but, in reality, imperial aspirations are never so 
repulsively presented to the mind. They are in- 
variably disguised for the great mass of the peo- 
ple under a mask of virtuous pretenses. Alleged 
defense against intended invasion, the undoing 
of historic wrongs, the attainment of "natural 
boundaries," the unification of divided peoples, 
the restoration of suppressed nationalities, the ex- 
tension of the benefits of a higher culture to 
lower races — all these are the reasons set forth 
in public proclamations and diplomatic apologies 
for schemes of aggression, while the advantages 
to be gained are represented as incidental con- 
comitants of these lofty purposes. 

It would, of course, be unreasonable to deny 



72 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

that long-obstructed national aspirations and a 
desire for equality of privilege with other nations 
may be perfectly legitimate, as for example, the 
unification of Germany and of Italy, or a deter- 
mination to put an end to exclusion from markets 
and waterways over which unfair monopolies 
have been established. In cases where whole 
peoples have by force been rendered economically 
dependent there may be, no doubt, just grounds 
for demanding changes ; but in the main these are 
fit subjects for negotiation and transaction, in 
accordance with legitimate business methods, 
rather than for the exercise of military force. In 
the past, resort to violence for the attainment of 
national ends has not only been customary, but 
it has seemed to follow as a logical corollary from 
the absolutist theory of the state. If that theory 
is still to be maintained, then there is no escape 
from the perfect legitimacy of wholesale con- 
quest, limited only by the power of a state to 
attain its ends by force. Every existing empire 
in the world has, in fact, been created by mili- 
tary power. To those who accept the absolutist 
theory of the state there is nothing reprehensible 
in the spirit of conquest and imperial domination. 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 73 

Why should any nation holding this theory re- 
frain from extending its power as far as possi- 
ble? It is, in truth, certain that it will not re- 
frain; and it follows with logical necessity that 
as long as this theory is held the conflict of nations 
will continue. 

The whole future of civilization turns upon 
the decision whether the state is to be henceforth 
a creation of force or a creation of law. If it is 
to be considered merely a creation of force, then 
preparation for war is the only wisdom ; for only 
the strong state can survive, and it must be at all 
times ready to fight for its existence. But if, on 
the other hand, the state is rightly to be con- 
ceived as a creation of law, then all states ac- 
cepting this theory are menaced by the existence 
of strong embodiments of power which refuse 
to be governed by the rules of law. As long as 
they exist, as long as they arm themselves for ag- 
gression, as long as they devise and entertain 
schemes of conquest, so long the truly constitu- 
tional states must be prepared to defend them- 
selves and even to defend one another. 

Considered by itself, merely dynastic impe- 
rialism is not at present a menace to the world's 



74 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

peace. There is probably no nation so devoted to 
a dynasty and to the dynastic conception of gov- 
ernment as to endanger the peace of its neighbors 
for purely dynastic reasons. Mankind has 
passed that point. But territorial expansion, the 
extension of political control for economic rea- 
sons, the lust for markets, the quest for resources, 
the command of great waterways, supremacy on 
the sea — these are the driving and compelling 
forces that make imperialism a terror in the 
world. In the hands of an efficient, irresponsible, 
and remorseless great power, these ambitions 
would render this planet a place of unending tor- 
ture to every law-respecting people. 

It is an interesting fact that in the case of the 
states of Europe which were at one time engaged 
in a struggle for empire, but have since abandoned 
it, there has been an impressive diminution in the 
proportion of time during which they have been 
occupied with war. Denmark, for example, dur- 
ing the period of its struggle for supremacy in 
the Baltic, in the sixteenth century devoted 32.5 
years, and in the seventeenth century 30.5 years, 
to war; but in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 75 

turies, when the kingdom had ceased to enter- 
tain imperial ambitions, the average time de- 
voted to war, in which it was involved chiefly 
through its alliances, was only about 13 per cent, 
of the whole period. In the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, Sweden, while aiming to be the 
seat of empire in the North by dominating Poland, 
North Germany, and Denmark, was engaged in 
war more than 50 per cent, of the time; but in 
the nineteenth century after the Swedish impe- 
rial ambitions had become extinct, although forced 
into war in self-defense during the Napoleonic 
period, warlike activities occupied only 6.5 per 
cent, of the time, and since 1815 the kingdom has 
been at peace. Holland, also, during the period 
of colonial expansion was involved in war during 
62 per cent, of the time, but in the last half cen- 
tury has been exempt from warfare. Spain, in 
the full tide of colonial expansion, was engaged 
in war during 82 per cent, of the time; but in the 
nineteenth century, with the exception of the 
Napoleonic period, the wars of Spain, until the 
short conflict with the United States over Cuba, 
were mere domestic insurrections against abso- 
lutism. 



76 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

If now we turn to the great powers, we find 
that they have been almost constantly engaged 
in war or preparation for it and that it has grown 
almost entirely out of their imperial aspirations. 
Austria, in the period of imperial consolidation 
from 1500 to 1650, was engaged in war 75.5 per 
cent, of the entire time. After the Peace of West- 
phalia there was a marked diminution of warlike 
activities. During the eighteenth century the 
proportion fell to 48 per cent., and in the nine- 
teenth to 13.5 per cent. During the whole period 
from 1100 down to the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century France has been engaged in war 
about one half the time, and during the last cen- 
tury 35 per cent, of the time. During four cen- 
turies Russia has been 60 per cent, of the time 
occupied with war. Since 1500, England has 
been involved nearly 52 per cent, of the time in 
foreign wars. 

Many of the wars included in these estimates 
were, it is true, of an unimportant character, and 
certainly no one of them, not even the Napoleonic 
wars, could compare in magnitude with the great 
European conflict now raging; but the greater 
part of them were, on one side or the other, im- 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 77 

perial wars, and proceeded upon the principle 
that the right of possession belongs to the power 
that can take and hold. There may have been 
differences in the treatment of the vanquished 
after the struggle was ended, and in the charac- 
ter of the civilization imposed by the conqueror; 
but in the past no great power has doubted that 
it had a perfect right to subjugate a weaker race 
or dismember a defenseless state whenever it was 
to its material advantage to do so, and there is no 
great power that has not acted in this way. 

Down to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, the 
most odious crime ever committed against a civi- 
lized people was, no doubt, the first partition of 
Poland; yet at the time not a voice was raised 
against it. Louis XV was "infinitely displeased," 
but did not even reply to the King of Poland's 
appeal for help. George III coolly answered that 
"justice ought to be the invariable rule of sover- 
eigns"; but concluded, "I fear, however, misfor- 
tunes have reached the point where redress can 
be had from the hand of the Almighty alone." 
Catherine II thought justice satisfied when "every 
one takes something." Frederick II wrote to his 
brother, "The partition will unite the three re- 



78 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

ligions, Greek, Catholic, and Calvinist; for we 
would take our communion from the same conse- 
crated body, which is Poland." Only Maria 
Theresa felt a twinge of conscience. She took, 
but she felt the shame of it. She wrote: 

We have by our moderation and fidelity to our engage- 
ments acquired the confidence, I may venture to say the 
admiration, of Europe. . . . One year has lost it all. I 
confess, it is difficult to endure it, and that nothing in the 
world has cost me more than the loss of our good name. 

It is a strange phenomenon that in matters 
where the unsophisticated human conscience so 
promptly pronounces judgment and spontane- 
ously condemns, the solid mass of moral convic- 
tion should count for nothing in affairs of state. 
Against it a purely national prejudice has almost 
never failed to prevail. At the present moment 
there is a strong sympathy expressed for the mis- 
fortunes of small states; and yet how little the 
great powers have done to secure the safety and 
the rights of the lesser nations. It may seem un- 
gracious, in the midst of a bitter struggle, to 
open the books of the past and recall to the con- 
testants the record they have helped to make. 
But how shall we ever put an end to economic 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 79 

imperialism if we do not lay bare its vices and if 
we do not condemn it in all who have practised 
it? So long as it remains unchallenged, it will 
go on. But the crime of letting it go on is not 
confined to the injury inflicted upon the quarry 
in the game of empire, the small state or the weak 
people. The most fatal injury is to the imperial 
peoples, who suffer themselves to be drawn into 
predatory aggression and made particeps criminis 
by the appeal to their racial instincts, their loyalty 
to their governments, their passion for supremacy, 
or the baser incentive of mere vulgar greed. If 
there is to be a better spirit in the new Europe, 
there will be required much penitence for the past 
and many high resolves for the future. But there 
are grounds for believing that a turning-point in 
history has now been reached. It has required 
the awful cataclysm that is now agitating Europe 
to open the eyes of civilized peoples to the truth 
that the state, with all its machinery of destruction, 
cannot longer be set above the moral law. It 
has at the same time raised the question in every 
thoughtful mind, What is the state, and whence 
comes its authority that for its own increase of 
power it may so ruthlessly crush the lives of men 



80 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

beneath its chariot wheel, hurling whole peoples 
against each other, armed with every ingenious 
device for wholesale murder, and strewing the 
earth with death and mutilation? There is hope 
in the fact that nations which in the past have 
themselves joined in the quest for empire and 
have taken part in the subjugation of helpless 
peoples now assert that they are fighting the 
battle of democracy and sacrificing their own lives 
for the safety of small and defenseless states. 
After that how can they ever again place empire 
above moral obligation, and material gain above 
the principles they proclaim? 

It was, beyond dispute, economic imperialism 
that caused the present war and plunged all Eu- 
rope into it. No one can fail to see the opposi- 
tion of interests that led up to it. They were 
real, they were obvious; but it was an anachron- 
ism to fight about them. They were primarily 
business interests — markets, resources, trade 
routes. These were the issues. To settle them 
advantagously the sword was thrown into the 
scale, great armies were mustered and despatched 
upon their errand of hewing their way to the heart 
of opposing nations. Has it been a good way 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 81 

to transact business ? It was easy to begin it, but 
it is difficult to end it. It can never be ended by 
mere fighting. The lesson of it must be learned 
and accepted by all; and, whoever wins on the 
battle-field, no real victory can be attained that 
does not result in the triumph of principles of 
universal justice, and the renunciation of material 
advantages as mere spoils of war. Unless the 
victory resulting from this war is a triumph for 
humanity, whoever the victor may be at the mak- 
ing of a treaty, it will not be a peace, but the seed 
of future conflicts. The real battle-field is in 
the souls of the nations ; and nations as well as in- 
dividual men must learn that "he who conquer- 
eth his own spirit is greater than he who taketh 
a city." 

Herein, then, lies the foreshadowing of a new 
Europe, that, hereafter, the stronger may not 
profit by his superior strength. It sounds, in- 
deed, like a new doctrine, and it will be hard to 
live by, but it has its apostolate. It is explicitly 
announced as a creed. Whatever sympathy the 
Entente Allies have received in America has been 
given to them because they were the first to an- 



82 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

nounce it, and because it is believed that they are 
sincere in proclaiming that law is to be respected 
and the right of the stronger is to be denied. 
They have opened a great issue, and they will be 
held to it. The small states, the weak peoples, 
the submerged races, they affirm, must henceforth 
receive from the powerful just consideration. 
The state is no longer to be regarded as an entity 
existing only for its own augmentation of power, 
above the law, defiant of humanity, and respon- 
sible to no one for its action. There is to be a 
society of states in a true sense, in which interna- 
tional law is to be respected. In brief, there is to 
be an end of economic imperialism. It is to be 
a different world. 

For the historian, at least, it is difficult to ac- 
cept these high resolutions as certain to endure. 
History has never been an advance in a direct 
line toward the fulfilment of great ideals. There 
are frequently reactionary movements, but they 
are seldom complete. Human nature does not 
change radically, but in great crises men see a 
new light; and, having seen it, it is never quite 
so dark as it was before. 

At all events, a new standard has been raised. 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 83 

Let us, therefore, rally to it. Let us make it easy 
to perform acts of penitence and contrition. Let 
all who believe in the constitutional state, who 
base it upon the rights of the person, who would 
subject it as far as possible to moral law, and who 
wish to banish from the earth the shadow of the 
sword, unite in accepting this standard. At least 
one step of progress has been made since the con- 
ferences at The Hague. Then no one dared to 
raise the deeper issues. No one in those conclaves 
ventured to question the prerogatives of govern- 
ment. No one felt that the moment had arrived 
to discuss the real causes of war or to rebuke the 
greed of the great powers. There was of neces- 
sity an atmosphere of courtesy, but it was breathed 
through a veil of mutual suspicion. The very 
fact that there were subjects that could not be 
frankly considered rendered impossible perfect 
confidence. Again and again it was whispered, 
"We must not isolate this or that power"; and, 
therefore, no action could be taken to which all 
the powers, — which knew that they were pitted 
against one another, — could not agree. The 
small states were all in leading-strings, each one 
thinking of its own exposure and, in some in- 



84 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

stances, of its own designs. It is well that we 
have reached a point where the truth may be told 
and where the real causes of conflict may be 
openly discussed. 

There can be among really constitutional states 
no discrimination based on mere forms of govern- 
ment. These grow out of the exigencies of each 
nation; and by its own principles each constitu- 
tional state is prohibited from dictating its 
form of government to any other. Monarchy, 
oligarchy, or democracy, all and equally may en- 
ter into the family of nations as long as they ac- 
cept and respect the principles of law. But eco- 
nomic imperialism is a spirit and not a form. 
Until that is renounced there can be no society of 
states, because it is anti-social, predatory, and 
based on arbitrary force. So long as nations, 
whatever their form of government, resort to mili- 
tary power in order to subordinate other nations, 
and forcibly extort from them economic advan- 
tages, so long civilization will find itself face to 
face with a dangerous enemy. 

If the Entente Allies are sincere in this war, 
they are prepared to make an end of forceful 
exploitation and to enter into solemn engagements 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 85 

to keep the faith. They have appealed to the con- 
science of mankind. They have denned their 
own conceptions of right and wrong. They have 
professed to be ready to die for them. They have 
insisted upon the sanctity of treaty obligations. 
They have proclaimed the rights of defenseless 
peoples. They have asserted that humanity and 
national morality are to be preferred to empire. 
In this they have risen to a great height, from 
which it would be humiliating ever to descend. 
To all who believe in their sincerity they have 
spoken with a divinely prophetic voice; and if 
they are true to their professions, they will create 
a new era in the history of the world. 

What then is the attitude of the Central Pow- 
ers, Germany and Austria, toward this standard? 
Are they also ready to accept it ? 

If the German Empire has an authorized cham- 
pion and apologist, entitled by position and at- 
tainments to be heard and credited, it is the 
former imperial chancellor, Prince von Biilow. 
In the first sentence of his book on " Imperial 
Germany," published just before the war began, 
he says: "Germany is the youngest of the Great 



86 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Powers of Europe; an uninvited and unwelcome 
intruder when it demanded its share in the treas- 
ures of the world." The reason is frankly 
stated. "This union of the states of the Mid-Eu- 
ropean continent," he says, "so long prevented, 
so often feared, and at last accomplished by the 
force of German arms and incomparable states- 
manship, seemed to imply something of a threat, 
or at any rate a disturbing factor." 

It may well be doubted if, at the time of the 
establishment of the German Empire, it was re- 
garded by the world at large as a "disturbing 
factor," much less as a "threat." German unity 
having been attained, Bismarck's avowed policy 
was to guard it from danger from any possible 
coalition of adverse powers. As long as that 
regime lasted, no disturbance of the peace was 
looked for from Germany. Prince von Bulow 
himself quotes Bismarck as saying: "In Serbia 
I am an Austrian, in Bulgaria I am a Russian, 
in Egypt I am English." At the Congress of 
Berlin, in 1878, all Europe except Russia was 
willing to accept the great chancellor at his own 
valuation as an "honest broker" interested chiefly 
in the peace of Europe; and as regards Russia, 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 87 

that was in Bismarck's mind "the wild elephant" 
that "was to walk between the two tame ele- 
phants, Germany and Austria"! 

But Prince von Bulow's own interpretation of 
the meaning of German unity is, it must be con- 
fessed, somewhat disquieting. The voluntary 
and spontaneous movement of the German people, 
he affirms, could never have created the empire. 
It was only through a struggle with the rest of 
Europe, he explains, that the Germanic spirit 
could be evoked. "The opposition in Germany 
itself could hardly be overcome," he continues, 
"except by such a struggle. By this means na- 
tional policy was interwoven with international 
policy ; with incomparable audacity and construc- 
tive statesmanship, in consummating the work of 
uniting Germany, Bismarck left out of play the 
political capabilities of the Germans, in which 
they have never excelled, while he called into ac- 
tion their fighting powers, which have always 
been their strongest point." 

These are illuminating words by the former 
chancellor of the empire, uttered in a spirit of 
historic truth ; and it is in the same spirit that they 
are here cited. The world would have no fear 



8S THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

of the German people, although unified and 
strong, if their old-time qualities were in control ; 
but, almost against its will, it seems, Germany 
became an imperial power and entered interna- 
tional politics, for which Prussian domination 
opened the way, and centralized military as- 
cendancy furnished the means of action. Prince 
von Bulow does not permit the German people 
themselves or their neighbors to forget that it was 
not the political capabilities of the constituent 
states, but Prussian military prowess alone that 
created and can further extend the empire. 

"The German Empire of medieval times," the 
former chancellor writes, "was not founded by the 
voluntary union of the tribes, but by the victory 
of one single tribe over the others, who for a long 
time unwillingly bore the rule of the stronger." 
And, in order to leave no doubt of the indebted- 
ness of the German people to Prussia, but rather 
to show them their complete dependence upon its 
force of arms, he continues: "As the old Em- 
pire was founded by a superior tribe, so the new 
was founded by the strongest of the individual 
states. ... In a modern form, but in the old 
way, the German nation has, after a thousand 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 89 

years, once again, and more perfectly, completed 
the work which it accomplished in early times, 
and for whose destruction it alone was to 
blame." 

It is precisely this return to the past, this 
frank revival of the methods in use a thousand 
years ago, this acceptance of a theory of the state 
which civilization has everywhere rejected, and 
this frank emphasis upon the intrinsic superior- 
ity of "fighting powers," that have made Europe 
afraid of Germany, and created a distrust of the 
use intended to be made of its tremendous ener- 
gies. 

And this distrust is not removed by the picture 
which Prince von Biilow paints of the intellectual 
state of Germany. "German intellect," he says, 
"had already reached its zenith without the help 
of Prussia. The princes of the West were the 
patrons of German culture; the Hohenzollerns 
were the political teachers and taskmasters." 
There is as yet, he affirms, no fusion between the 
Prussian and the German spirit. Representa- 
tives of German intellectual life, he assures us, 
sometimes regard the Prussian state as a "hostile 
power," and the Prussian at times considers the 



90 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

free development of the German intellect as a "de- 
structive force." "Again and again," he declares, 
"in Parliament and in the press accusations are 
levelled against Prussia in the name of freedom, 
and against the undaunted German intellect in 
the name of order." Between them, he assures 
us, there is as yet no real reconciliation. 

It does not admit of doubt that, if Germany 
were to-day in the mood it was when the German 
universities and cultivated classes voiced their 
sentiments in 1848, there would be a vigorous 
movement for internationalism. Instead of this, 
on its cloistered side, the German nation conceives 
of itself as a universal spirit of righteousness — 
humanity inspired by divinity — working for in- 
carnation in mankind through its superior forms 
of culture. In other countries, it is assumed, in- 
dividual men are seeking only their own private 
happiness. They have no sense of universality 
or principle of organization. The German state 
cares for all its own. It alone, therefore, has the 
secret of ultimate victory. It alone can save the 
world from degeneration and decay. For this 
overwhelming reason it ought to conquer, domi- 
nate, and reconstruct the world! 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 91 

Dies ist unser! so lass uns sagen und so es behaupten. 

Considered by itself, this Weltanschauung 
would be entirely harmless, a form of innocuous 
spiritual pride; but, taken in connection with the 
Prussian military organization, to which it looks 
as a means of action, it has become portentous. 
Like the faith of Islam, with which Pan-German- 
ism unconsciously compares itself, it has kindled 
a fire of fanaticism that does not shrink from 
extremes; and thus, to the pride of culture, is 
added the zeal of religion : 

Wir sind des Hammergottes Geschlecht 
Und wollen sein Weltreich erobern. 

This spirit of Pan-Germanism reaches its full 
flower in the " Alldeutscher Verband," whose pub- 
lications, widely scattered in cheap popular edi- 
tions, have done infinite damage to the reputa- 
tion of the empire. Among the publications of 
this kind the most elaborate is the book entitled 
"Gross-Deutschland " published at Leipsic, in 
1911, by Otto Richard Tannenberg. 

Here is recited and interpreted ethnologically, 



92 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

statistically, chartographically, and prophetically 
the German dream of Weltpolitik. With erudi- 
tion that has involved years of research, and with 
a definiteness and perspicuity that leave nothing 
unexplained, even down to the definitive treaties 
of peace after the Great War shall have accom- 
plished its purposes, we have in this elaborate 
work a complete exposition of economic imperial- 
ism as contemplated by the Pan-Germanists — an 
exposition sown broadcast among the people. 

There is here no question of diffusing German 
culture for the benefit of other nations, and no 
attempt to prove the moral value of superior or- 
ganization; there is nothing, in fact, but "the 
promise of booty, the prospect of profit, the vision 
of panting prey waiting to be transfixed,' ' a world 
empire, produced by the vivisection of civilized 
nations under the edge of the sword. 

This urgent exhortation to prompt military ag- 
gression, with incredible frankness, makes no pre- 
tense of anything forced upon Germany, but de- 
clares it to be both expedient and practicable to 
acquire new territory, expel its occupants, and 
enjoy its resources, without the slightest recogni- 
tion of any rights or any law, Being strong, 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 93 

numerous, and well prepared, it insists that the 
time has come for Germans to strike for world 
dominion. "The period of preparation," Tan- 
nenberg declares, "has lasted a long time (from 
1871 to 1911) — forty years of toil on land and 
sea, the end constantly in view. The need now 
is to begin the battle, to vanquish, and to con- 
quer; to gain new territories — lands for colon- 
ization for the German peasants, fathers of fu- 
ture warriors, and for the future conquests. . . . 
'Peace' is a detestable word; peace between Ger- 
mans and Slavs is like a treaty made on paper, 
between water and fire. . . . Since we have the 
force, we have not to seek reasons, — not more 
than the English in taking South Africa." 

Once brought within the fold of the Greater 
Germany, there would be in Europe, aside from 
the Balkans, eighty-seven millions, contributed by 
Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, and the 
Baltic provinces of Russia, originally of German 
stock. That some of these populations have 
ceased to speak German does not signify; it is 
a matter of ethnic unity, the restoration of long- 
lost brothers. That other races occupy these ter- 
ritories also, sometimes exceeding in numbers the 



94 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

German occupants, does not render this less neces- 
sary. "If all the German tribes existed to-day," 
writes Tannenberg, "and had the force of the 
Low Saxons, there would be neither Latins nor 
Slavs. The frontiers of Europe would be the 
frontiers of Germany in Europe." 

But this scheme of Germanic expansion does 
not end with the unification of the Teutonic race in 
Europe. There would be other Germanies, all 
definitely outlined and marked in colors : an Afri- 
can Germany, stretching across the dark con- 
tinent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean; a 
near Asiatic Germany, covering the whole of the 
Ottoman Empire; a far Asiatic Germany, em- 
bracing the greater part of China; an oceanic 
Germany, including all the Dutch islands in the 
Pacific; and even an American Germany, cover- 
ing the whole of the southern half of South Amer- 
ica. Such are the Teutonic ambitions and the 
Teutonic plans of conquest as delineated upon 
Tannenberg's future map of the world. 

Wherever there are Germans, wherever Ger- 
mans go, there the standard of the imperial eagle 
should be set up. "We are eighty-seven millions 
of representatives of German nationality on our 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 95 

continent," runs this exhortation to universal 
dominion. "Our country is the most populous, 
the best organized. The new era is at hand. We 
shall fight and we shall conquer. ... If in the 
time of the great migrations a man of mental and 
military strength had arisen to group the formid- 
able, unnumbered, and innumerable mass of the 
German people, to give it one will, one thought, 
in politics or in religion, that admirable force, 
perhaps the greatest that has ever existed, would 
not have been dissipated by an insensate individ- 
ualism. The movement would have united to 
the force of Islam the German tenacity. ... The 
culture of Europe would, to-day, be purely Ger- 
man, and with it the entire world." 

How terrific this incorrigible spirit of tribalism 
is can be realized only when we stop to reflect 
what the culture of the time of the great migra- 
tions was, and what this unchained brute force 
and tenacity would have inflicted upon Europe, 
if it had never been tempered and ameliorated 
by the Latin influences that gave it the first sem- 
blance to civilization. 

"In the good old time," writes Tannenberg, "it 
sometimes happened that a strong people attacked 



96 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

a feeble one, exterminated it, and expelled it from 
its patrimony. To-day these acts of violence are 
no longer committed. To-day, everything goes 
gently in this poor world, and the privileged are 
for peace. The little peoples and the debris of 
peoples have invented a new word, 'International 
Right.' At bottom it is nothing but a calcula- 
tion based upon our stupid generosity. . . . 
Some one should make room; either the Slavs of 
the West or the South, or ourselves ! As we are 
the strongest, the choice will not be difficult. . . . 
A people can maintain itself only by growing. . . . 
Greater Germany is possible only through a strug- 
gle with Europe. Russia, France, and England 
will oppose the foundation of Greater Germany. 
Austria, powerless as she is, will not weigh much 
in the balance. At all events, Germans will not 
march against Germany." 

The aim is not wanting in clear-sightedness. 
Not everything can be accomplished at once. "A 
customs union of Greater Germany," runs the 
project, "with the countries of the Balkans and 
the Danube would be in their interest as well as 
ours. On the one side, Greater Germany, a world 
power, a country industrial and commercial; on 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 97 

the other, the Magyars, the Rumanians, the Serbs, 
the Bulgars, the Albanians, the Greeks, — peoples 
exclusively agricultural. ... By that accord, 
the commerce of the East, of Syria, and of Meso- 
potamia would fall into our hands, . . . not only 
a market for the products of industry of the 
mother-country, but also a point d'appui and an 
advance toward our expansion in the Far East 
and in Africa." 

Of course none of these aspirations is put forth 
with official authority, but not being contradicted, 
they appear to have a certain sanction. Certainly 
they have never been disavowed by the Imperial 
German Government. In part, at least, they have 
very high confirmation. Prince von Biilow, for 
example, writes: "We have carefully cultivated 
good relations with Turkey and Islam, especially 
since the journey to the East undertaken by our 
Emperor and Empress. These relations are not 
of a sentimental nature, for the continued exist- 
ence of Turkey serves our interest from the indus- 
trial, military, and political points of view. In- 
dustrially and financially, Turkey offered us a 
rich and fertile field of activity . . . which we 
have cultivated with profit"; and he concludes by 



98 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

expressing the reliance of Germany upon Turkey 
"in the event of a general European war," while 
for Austria Turkey is described as "the most con- 
venient neighbor possible." For Prince von 
Biilow, as he admits, Bismarck's opinion that Tur- 
key and the Balkans were not worth the bones of 
a single Pomeranian grenadier was no longer to 
be entertained. It was, in fact, to the East that 
his vision turned. 

"No sensible man," he declares, "will ever en- 
tertain the idea of recovering either national or 
political influence over the lands in the South and 
West which were lost so many centuries ago." 
For these losses, he admits, "compensation has 
been granted by Providence in the East." 
"Those possessions," he concludes, "we must and 
will retain." But Prince von Biilow has never 
been an advocate of a Little Germany. "Bis- 
marck's successors," he declared in the Reichstag, 
on November 14, 1906, "must not imitate, but 
develop his policy. If the course of events de- 
mands that we transcend the limits of Bismarck's 
aims, then we must do so." 

If there has, in fact, as German statesmen pro- 
fess, been an "encirclement" of Germany, is it to 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 99 

be wondered at, in view of the frank proclama- 
tion of German plans of territorial expansion? 
No part of the world has been considered immune 
from attack. "For us," says Tannenberg, "it is 
a vital question to acquire colonial empires which 
will enable us to remain independent of the good- 
will of our competitors, offer us a market for our 
products and our industry, and give us the possi- 
bility of procuring the raw materials so necessary 
and so precious which now are wanting. I men- 
tion, for example, only the need of cotton. It 
may be to us of no importance at whose expense 
it shall be taken. It is essential that we have 
these colonies, and that is why we shall have 
them. Whether it be at the cost of England or 
of France, it is only a question of power, and per- 
haps also of a little risk." 

How much risk it would be advisable to run 
may be inferred from Tannenberg's complaint 
that Bismarck's policy was "senile," because as 
early as 1885 it did not reach out for Cuba and 
the Philippines, especially Cuba, "the pearl of 
the Antilles," as large as Bavaria, Wurtemberg, 
Baden, and Alsace united; which, Tannenberg 
asserts, "was well worth a little war" ! 



100 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

And he could not drop this subject without add- 
ing an insult to the citizens of German origin in 
the United States by saying: "The position of 
Cuba relative to North America would have 
created a new relation between the German peo- 
ple and the ten millions of German emigrants 
domiciled in the United States; and, beside its 
situation, would have given us the preponderance 
in the Gulf of Mexico." 

"After all," runs this outspoken exhortation to 
aggression, "politics is a business," a statement 
that recalls Prince von Bulow's observation that 
"politics is a rough trade, in which sentimental 
souls rarely bring even a simple piece of work to 
a successful issue." "Justice and injustice," con- 
tinues Tannenberg, "are notions which are neces- 
sary only in civil life." And yet he pleads it is 
"unjust" that small states, like Belgium and Hol- 
land, should possess rich colonies and enjoy 
nearly double the per capita wealth enjoyed by 
subjects of the German Empire, "only because 
these two countries do not bear arms, as we do." 
"For that reason," he says, "they capitalize what 
they save, and laugh in our faces." But why 
should not Germans do the same? Is economic 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 101 

imperialism after all an unprofitable busi- 
ness? 

It would be easy, Tannenberg declares, to make 
it profitable. Think of Luxemburg, with a total 
military strength of only 323 soldiers and officers, 
only one man to a thousand of the population! 
And Belgium, rich in colonies, a great center of 
industry and commerce, with its coal and iron, 
and only a paper protection ! " Yet Belgium," he 
reminds us, "was once a part of the German 
Empire." 

A subject that awakens very serious reflection 
is presented in the appendix to this remarkable 
work, which contains the text of the treaties to be 
concluded when the war for European conquest 
is ended. By the imaginary treaty of Brussels, 
drawn up in 1911, France cedes to Germany the 
Vosges, with Epinal; Moselle and Meuse, with 
Nancy and Luneville; the town of Verdun; and 
the Ardennes, with Sedan. France further gives 
asylum to the inhabitants of this territory, and 
establishes them elsewhere within her own bor- 
ders, in order to make room for German settlers; 
declares its assent to the incorporation of Belgium, 
Holland, Luxemburg, and Switzerland into the 



102 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

German Empire; cedes to Germany the twelve 
milliards of francs lent to Russia; renounces all 
colonies; and pays to Germany a cash indemnity 
of thirty-five milliards of marks. By the suppos- 
ititious treaty of Riga, also drawn up in 1911, 
Russia cedes vast territories to Germany; creates 
a kingdom of Poland on its own soil, where the 
Prussian Poles, to be expelled from Prussian 
Poland, may reside ; and accepts the incorporation 
of Austria, ceded by the Hapsburgs to the Hohen- 
zollerns, into the German Empire. As an in- 
ducement to Great Britain to sanction these pro- 
ceedings, the French and Portuguese colonies are 
by these treaties to be divided between the two 
empires on the assumption that British neutrality 
would be thus insured. 

In citing these documents, so frankly disclosing 
the Pan-German dream of expansion, there is no 
intention to insist, as Andre Cheradame has as- 
serted, that these specific plans were all contem- 
plated by the highest official authorities of the 
German Empire; but it is a disturbing reflection 
that, as he points out, ninety per cent, of the whole 
program of the Pan-German propaganda, so far 
as the continent of Europe is concerned, has, not- 



ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM 103 

withstanding unexpected opposition, actually been 
carried into temporary effect. 

What is most discouraging from the point of 
view of international society is the fact that the 
official philosophy of Prussia, which, as Prince 
von Biilow reminds us, "attained her greatness as 
a country of soldiers and officials . . . and to 
this day is still in all essentials a state of soldiers 
and officials," has taken command of German 
intelligence and industry. That philosophy is 
explicitly stated by the former imperial chancellor 
in the following words : 

"It is a law of life and development in history 
that, where two national civilizations meet, they 
fight for ascendancy. In the struggle between 
nationalities, one nation is the hammer and the 
other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the 
vanquished." 



CHAPTER IV 
THE VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 

SO long as governments insist upon the right 
of a strong state to subjugate or to exploit 
against its interest a weaker state, there will be 
no international harmony, and the world will be 
subjected to the ravages of recurrent wars. The 
attitude of the great powers upon this subject is, 
therefore, of the greatest moment, for it will de- 
termine the fate of civilization; and, in the end, 
in all but the most absolute governments, this 
attitude will be affected by the predominant opin- 
ions of thoughtful men. 

It is, then, of interest to inquire, What is the 
present position of the great powers, upon whose 
decisions the future peace of the world will chiefly 
depend, regarding the rights of the small states, 
and of those colonial possessions which in the past 
have often been so cruelly exploited for the benefit 

of their overlords ? In brief, are there any powers 

104 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 105 

that are willing to submit to a peaceful decision of 
their own rights in relation to the weaker states, 
and voluntarily to subject themselves to principles 
of law and equity in their conduct generally? 
Upon the answer to these questions turns the 
whole problem of even partial international or- 
ganization and the prospect of eliminating the 
military control of international affairs. Even 
though it should be found that a certain number 
of powers were disposed to apply strictly ethical 
principles to their business transactions, without 
throwing their military force into the scale, it 
would not follow that military force could be en- 
tirely dispensed with; for, as long as there re- 
mained in the world even one formidable military 
power that persisted in using force for its material 
advantage and refused to resort to pacific means 
for adjusting conflicts of interest, it would still 
be necessary for the powers that were ready to dis- 
pense with military decisions to arm themselves 
for defense against aggression, and perhaps to 
combine their forces in the interest of safety and 
justice. 

It would, however, mark the beginning of a new 
era if a number of great powers were sufficiently 



106 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

enlightened to perceive that economic imperialism 
is, in effect, an anachronism, and that their real 
interests would be better served by a combination 
not for the balance of power, but for a decided 
preponderance of power, that would be able by 
their union, on the one hand, to establish a sys- 
tem of legal relations and conciliatory policies; 
and, on the other, to render military exploitation 
an unprofitable and even a dangerous adventure. 

It would, undoubtedly, be both unwise and un- 
just to limit in any way the extent of interna- 
tional union were it not for the fact that, until 
profound changes occur, a universal union would 
seem to be impossible. There is at present no 
unanimity among the nations regarding any au- 
thoritative basis for a society of states. No pro- 
posal has ever been made for the recognition of 
any such basis in any international conference. 
Because some powers have held that the state is a 
law to itself, and that there is no law which it is 
bound to obey, it has been impossible even to sug- 
gest that there is for sovereign states such a thing 
as outlawry. If there is in the nature of things 
no super-state law, and if states cannot make it 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 107 

without general consent, then of course no state 
can be treated as an outlaw; for there is no stand- 
ard by which the legality of its conduct may be 
determined. 

But it is still possible for a union of states to be 
formed which can determine by what law its mem- 
bers will be governed, and it is possible for them 
to exclude from it any state that does not accept 
this law. It is likely that if the formation of 
civil society had been suspended until every bri- 
gand and every housebreaker in the community 
was ready to favor a law against robbery, civil 
society would never have come into existence. 
The only way, it would appear, in which there 
is ever to be a real society of states is for those 
great powers which can find a sufficient commun- 
ity of interest to unite in the determination that 
they will themselves observe principles of justice 
and equity, and that they will unite their forces 
in defense of them. 

It would be well if, at the conclusion of the 
Great War, or, if possible, even before it is ended, 
certain basic principles could be laid down that 
would be accepted by the belligerents as inher- 
ently just and equitable, and solemnly subscribed 



108 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

to as binding upon them. Upon no other basis 
would a permanent peace appear to be possible. 
Any other result would be a mere armistice; for, 
whatever it may have been in the beginning, the 
present war is now declared to be "a conflict of 
principles," a battle for law and right on the one 
side, and for arbitrary power on the other. 

If the conflict is really a struggle for a just or- 
ganization of international relations, it is of the 
highest importance to the cause of civilization 
that the principles necessary to a true society of 
states should be clearly formulated and, as far as 
possible, accepted now, while the conflict is still 
going on; and those who profess to champion 
them should not hesitate solemnly to pledge them- 
selves to respect and obey them. We should then 
know with greater certainty what the purposes of 
all the belligerents really are. 

In a book on "The War of Democracy," Vis- 
count Bryce, whose writings and personality are 
held in very high esteem in this country, employs 
in the subtitle the expression, "the struggle for a 
new Europe." What, then, is this new Europe 
to be for which, as Lord Bryce would have us 
believe, the Entente Allies are struggling? Does 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 109 

it merely involve some changes in political geog- 
raphy? Thoughtful men will not be satisfied 
with that, for the mere shifting of frontiers, how- 
ever reasonable it may seem at the time, has no 
guarantee of permanence except by means of 
armed force until a better system of international 
relations is adopted. Or is it for a mere form of 
government that the Allies are contending ? Who 
then has the authority to impose upon Europe a 
particular kind of polity, and who can assure us 
that democracy, if made universal, would always 
be wise and just and peaceable ? No, it is some- 
thing deeper than these outward changes that this 
experienced historian and statesman has in mind 
when he speaks of "the fundamental significance 
of the struggle for a new Europe." "The present 
war," he insists, "differs from all that have gone 
before it not only in its vast scale and in the vol- 
ume of misery it has brought upon the world, but 
also in the fact that it is a war of principles, and 
a war in which the permanent interests not merely 
of the belligerent powers, but of all nations, are 
involved as such interests were never involved 
before." 

That the present war is on either side a purely 



110 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

altruistic championship of merely abstract prin- 
ciples cannot, of course, be pretended. On the 
side of the Entente Allies, as well as on that of 
the Central Powers, immediate national interests 
of great consequence are involved. But this does 
not signify that in its underlying principles and 
in its ultimate consequences the struggle may not 
in some sense be an affair of all mankind. Our 
own country has been already so vitally affected 
by it, and is now so deeply involved in all of its 
results, that we cannot regard the fate of these 
principles with indifference. What is truly sur- 
prising to us in this country is that two great em- 
pires, England and Russia, and the French Re- 
public, which has twice quelled the spirit of im- 
perialism within itself and reasserted its love of 
freedom, are now solidly united in fighting the 
battle of democracy. Suddenly, through the mys- 
terious working of some intangible but all-per- 
vading and overmastering influence, we have 
witnessed this unexpected alinement of nations, 
in which there is an almost general repudiation 
of the past, a reassertion of the larger claims of 
humanity, and a spirit of sacrifice that is an as- 
tonishment to all who behold it. There is yet 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 111 

to be fought a battle more sublime than any ever 
yet waged in the name of democracy, because it 
will be a battle for that which gives to democracy 
its indestructible vitality — the essential dignity of 
the human person, and its inherent right to free- 
dom, to justice, and to the quality of mercy at the 
hands of one's fellow-men. This is no tribal ad- 
venture, no thrust for territorial expansion, no 
quest for new markets and undeveloped resources, 
no aspiration for world supremacy; but a con- 
solidated human demand that in the future the 
world be so regulated that innocent and non-com- 
batant peoples may live under the protection of 
law, may depend upon the sanctity of treaties, 
may be secure in their independence and rights 
of self-government, and that the people of all 
nations may enjoy in safety the use of the great 
seas and oceans which nature has provided as the 
highways of peaceful commerce and fruitful 
human intercourse. 

In its beginning the European War was un- 
doubtedly a conflict of national and racial inter- 
ests, a struggle for the future control of the Balkan 
Peninsula and the debris of the disintegrating 
Ottoman Empire. Was the prize to be possessed 



112 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

by the Teuton or the Slav? The assassination at 
Sarajevo and the part in it attributed to Serbia 
were only signals and excuses for the beginning 
of a drama already carefully staged and in which 
the parts were supposed to be carefully assigned. 
Germany intended that it should be a swift, short 
war, in which the principal prize would be won 
by a comparatively small effort, and others inci- 
dentally acquired. But interests were affected 
and forces were evoked that had not entered into 
the calculations of the aggressors. It was the un- 
expected emergence of these new forces, and the 
nature of the resistance met with in the course 
of the war, that entirely changed its character, 
and converted it into a war of principles ; for the 
progress of the conflict disclosed an antithesis of 
conceptions regarding matters of general human 
interest that had hitherto been unsuspected. The 
whole system of law, treaties, and human obliga- 
tions which had been counted upon as furnishing 
a sure foundation for civilized society was sud- 
denly discovered to be without solidity. In the 
general debacle the hopes, the beliefs, even the 
friendships, with which the present century had 
opened so auspiciously in matters international 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 113 

were suddenly swept away. It is needless to 
dwell upon barbarities on land and sea that a 
few years ago would have been utterly incredible. 
Our thoughts must take a deeper direction. We 
must face the fact that we have not to deal with 
mere incidents, but with the underlying causes of 
which they are the outward expression. If the 
postulates of economic imperialism are correct, 
there is nothing abnormal in all this destruction, 
desecration, and slaughter at which the minds 
and consciences of many have revolted ; for upon 
this assumption, sovereign power is acting wholly 
within its rights, and is even engaged in the 
solemn execution of its sacred duty. There is, 
therefore, upon this assumption, nothing left to 
us but to arm, mine, fortify, and entrench, re- 
pudiating internationalism and trusting solely to 
our physical instruments of defense. In truth, 
there are before the nations only two alternatives : 
on the one hand, the reestablishment of interna- 
tional existence upon a more solid foundation 
than that afforded by military rivalry and the 
supremacy of national power, and, on the other, 
a return to the life of troglodytes. If the world 
is to escape permanent international anarchy, it 



114 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

will be through the decision of governments to 
accept and loyally respect certain principles of 
justice and mutual obligation in the form of a 
constitution of civilization in which are recog- 
nized the reciprocal rights and duties of separate 
nations. It is within the capacity of a few great 
powers to adopt and maintain such principles; 
and they will do so whenever the masses of the 
people, speaking in their sovereign right, declare 
that their governments must accept and conform 
to them. If this is what Lord Bryce means, when 
he speaks of the "War of Democracy,' ' then he is 
voicing an appeal to all thoughtful persons in 
every civilized nation ; for the democratic concep- 
tion, based as it is on the rights of man, is the only 
true source of law for the rights of states also, 
and is alone adapted to that general extension 
which opens a vision of a commonwealth of man- 
kind in which all nations, regardless of terri- 
torial boundaries, may rightfully claim a place. 

Are there, then, any nations that are prepared 
to be guided by this vision, to forego the aspira- 
tion for world supremacy, and to unite with one 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 115 

another in the creation of such a general common- 
wealth? 

It is an interesting fact not only that the people 
of Russia have overthrown autocracy, but that, 
in the midst of a great crisis, another power which 
the world has regarded as imperial should openly 
recognize the truth that it has, by the forces of 
its own national development, ceased to be an 
"empire" in the old sense of the word, and has 
become a confraternity of free and virtually self- 
governing communities. 

The present war has revealed to Great Britain, 
and made it evident to all the world, that British 
strength does not at present consist in the exer- 
cise of an imperium, but in the recognition of the 
essential freedom and the equal rights of what 
the most authoritative British statesmen now call 
the "autonomous colonies"; and it is especially 
interesting to find a conservative, like Bonar Law, 
saying that what was impossible before the war 
will be easy after it, and that the relation of the 
dominions to the mother-country would never 
again be what it was before. It is, in fact, a con- 
federation of autonomous self-governing repub- 



116 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

lies, rather than an empire in the proper sense, 
that is coming into existence through this internal 
transformation of the British Empire. Common 
aims, common safety, common interests, and com- 
mon ideas — these are the foundations of this con- 
fraternity. It is not the bugle-call of imperial 
command that has brought troops from every 
quarter of the globe to participate with Great 
Britain in the present struggle, but the common 
conviction that democracy is in danger and that 
free nations must stand together. An English 
historian, in the midst of the war, writes : 

This is a testing time for Democracy. The people of 
Great Britain and the Dominions, to whom all the world 
looks as trustees, together with France and America, of 
the great democratic tradition, are brought face to face, 
for the first time, with their full responsibility as British 
citizens. Upon the way in which that responsibility is 
realized and discharged depends the future of the demo- 
cratic principle, not only in these islands, but throughout 
the world. 

And this is the conviction of the dominions 
themselves. To the astonishment of the world, 
not one has failed to respond. Sir Clifford Sifton 
said in an address at Montreal : 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 117 

Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity, or 
obligation, Canada has decided as a nation to make war. 
We have levied an army; we have sent the greatest army to 
England that has ever crossed the Atlantic, to take part 
in the battles of England. We have placed ourselves in 
opposition to great world powers. We are now train- 
ing and equipping an army greater than the combined 
forces of Wellington and Napoleon at the battle of Water- 
loo. 

Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and 
even India, have responded voluntarily in a simi- 
lar manner ; but they did so not as imperial pos- 
sessions, but as virtually independent nations, 
sure of themselves, confident of their future, and 
inspired by the vision of a union in which for all 
coming time they are to be free and independent 
participants. From the uttermost parts of the 
earth they have gathered "to honor their un- 
covenanted bond, obedient to one uncalculating 
purpose ; and the fields of their final achievement, 
where they lie in a fellowship too close and a 
peace too deep to be broken, are the image and 
the epitome of the cause for which they fell." 

But in all this fine consciousness of British 
unity there is not the slightest touch of really im- 
perial influence. The Canadian and the Austra- 



118 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

lian do not wish to be rated as Englishmen, and 
would sometimes even resent it. Common tradi- 
tions there are ; but they are not merely traditions 
of race, of language, or of religion. They are 
primarily traditions of liberty. It is not the state 
that holds them together ; it is the conviction that 
all that makes the state worth saving is the pro- 
tection it affords to freedom, the value it gives to 
the individual life. 

But such an inspiration can never end in a 
stolid and pertinacious tribalism. It feels a 
larger kinship and seeks a wider partnership. It 
gives unity to the nation, but it reaches out for 
international friendships and affinities. It seeks 
to establish the greater commonwealth of nations. 
It aspires to a place in a system. And the same 
Canadian who said that Canada was ready to 
take part in the battles of England said at the 
same time : "I say to you that Canada must stand 
now as a nation. . . . The nations will say, if 
you can levy armies to make war, you can attend 
to your own business, and we will not be referred 
to the head of the Empire ; we want you to answer 
our questions directly." 

By the force of its own free development de- 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 119 

mocracy must become international. In no other 
way can it realize its own security. In no other 
way can it attain to its own ideals. "It is neces- 
sary," says a Canadian writer, "to declare with 
utmost haste . . . that motives of national ag- 
grandisement and national enmity must be sub- 
ordinated to the desire for the larger benefits grow- 
ing out of peace and international good-will." 
And never will the autonomous colonies enter a 
war in the name of the empire in which they do 
not have a voice. Said the high commissioner of 
the Australian Commonwealth, Mr. Andrew 
Fisher, on his arrival in London : 

If I had stayed in Scotland, I should have been able to 
heckle my member on questions of imperial policy, and 
to vote for or against him on that ground. I went to 
Australia, and I have been prime minister. But all the 
time I have had no say whatever about imperial policy — 
no say whatever. Now that can't go on. There must be 
some change. 

In April, 1916, at the conference of the Entente 
Allies held at Paris, the sense of a commonwealth 
took a wider range, and this meeting, it has been 
held, assumed the form of "a legislative parlia- 
ment of France, Russia, England, Italy, Belgium, 



120 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Serbia, Japan, and the self-governing British 
Dominions." The subject of interest was finan- 
cial solidarity during the present war, and even 
after it. Some of the exclusiveness that marked 
that conference may vanish, and will certainly 
be diminished after the war is over; but it may 
well be that, "if the agreements growing out of this 
event stand the test of time, they will dispose ef- 
fectively of the contention that dissimilar nations 
cannot act in harmony for their mutual advantage 
in matters international." 

Three of these nations, Britain, France, and 
Russia, are henceforth to be bound together as at 
the beginning of the war it was never imagined 
they could ever be by a new sense of the value and 
the meaning of democracy. They will be in re- 
lations that will enable them after the war to dis- 
pense with military action except for their com- 
mon defense. With the sincere support of other 
nations for common purposes, there should be no 
room in the world for economic imperialism in its 
existing form. Deplorable, indeed, would be a 
further and more powerfully organized example 
of it by prohibition of commercial intercourse, 
which would be, in effect, an indefinite prolonga- 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 121 

tion of international strife on economic lines. 
But such a purpose is not in the highest interest 
of these powers ; and, when this comes to be duly 
considered in the treaties of peace it may happily 
be averted. 

Taking all its past into account, it would be 
impossible to exempt the British Empire from the 
charge of economic imperialism. No nation has 
ever been more constantly actuated by the spirit 
of commercialism sustained by military force than 
the British. The fault is frankly admitted by its 
own historians. Professor Ramsay Muir says: 

This motive has been present in many of our own wars; 
it has been the predominant motive with us perhaps more 
often than with any other people, from the time when we 
fought to overthrow the Spanish monopoly of the tropical 
West, to the time when we waged two wars with China 
in order to force open the gates of that vast market. 

But Great Britain has learned the lesson of 
experience. It is not just to blame a progressive 
and liberal people for the actions of the past, when 
other standards of conduct were generally ac- 
cepted, and when national rivalry was necessi- 
tated by the conditions of the time. The pressing 



122 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

question is, Shall these conditions be perpetuated? 
Great Britain now answers, "No." 

The Imperial German Government alleges that 
prior to 1914 there was a conspiracy headed by 
Great Britain, to suppress "the liberty of national 
evolution" of the German Empire and to deny 
"the freedom of the seas." 

What then is meant by "the liberty of national 
evolution" and "the freedom of the seas"? 

Aiming to become a world power, Germany has 
desired to possess a free hand in acquiring terri- 
tory in all parts of the world, without being sub- 
ject to the restraint of other powers. Portions of 
every continent are marked on the map as future 
German possessions. "The German Empire," 
says Franz von Liszt, "has not yet acquired the 
title of a World Power for it is far from being 
comparable with Great Britain and Russia, either 
by the number of its inhabitants or the independ- 
ence of its economic life. Still less can Austria- 
Hungary pretend to this title." To obtain it is, 
however, he thinks, a legitimate aspiration of the 
Central empires. There will, of course, he ad- 
mits, be opposition by other nations; but the goal 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 123 

is worthy of the effort. "The supremacy of the 
world," he says, "belongs to the Power which by 
its geographic configuration, the extent of its ter- 
ritory, and the number of its population, possesses 
a complete economic independence." The Ger- 
mans claim this as their rightful inheritance. 
Their strength, they consider, gives them a title 
to it. They are self-avowed contestants for world 
supremacy. 

And "the freedom of the seas," what does that 
imply? It signifies, as the Imperial German 
Government understand it, the unrestrained privi- 
lege of obtaining a colonial empire by means of 
maritime strength. 

To realize such an ambition there must be left 
no rival on the sea who would be able to prevent 
it. Speaking of the sea power of England, a 
German writer says : 

The war between her and us . . . turns upon the mas- 
tery of the seas, and the priceless values bound up with 
that; and a coexistence of the two States, of which many 
Utopians dream, is ruled out as definitely as was the co- 
existence of Rome and Carthage. The antagonism be- 
tween England and Germany will, therefore, remain until 
one of them is finally brought to the ground. 



124 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

It is this incessant invocation of war and the 
indisposition to accept the possibility of peace 
that have made it so difficult for foreign peoples 
to understand the mind of Germany, or for those 
who wish to be friends to explain and defend the 
German attitude toward other nations. Even the 
German emperor himself has not hesitated to 
throw out a challenge to all the maritime powers. 
"I will never rest," he has said, "until I have 
raised my navy to a position similar to that occu- 
pied by my army." And the reason for this de- 
termination he frankly declares in the words: 
"Germany's colonial aims can only be gained 
when Germany has become lord of the ocean." 

What, prior to August, 1914, had Great Britain 
done to call forth an accusation of irreconcilable 
hostility? No foreboding of such antagonism ex- 
isted in 1890, when, for the protectorate of Zan- 
zibar, Great Britain surrendered the island of 
Helgoland to Germany; or in 1895, when that 
stronghold became the fortified gate of the Kiel 
Canal at its North Sea terminus. Even when the 
first extensive naval legislation was enacted in 
Germany, in 1900, it created no great disturbance 
in England. The first indication that British ap- 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 125 

prehension was aroused was the building of the 
earliest "dreadnaughts" by England in 1905. 
But even in 1907 Germany was making cordial 
public professions of faith in her English rival's 
fairness and generosity. " Everywhere in the 
world," said a representative of the imperial Ger- 
man foreign office, in May of that year, to a dele- 
gation of British journalists, "where Great 
Britain has brought any country under her in- 
fluence, she has never suppressed the trade de- 
velopments in other lands, as many nations have 
to their own detriment. You have always de- 
voted your energies and labors to the opening up 
of the country's sources of production, bringing 
it nearer to civilization and progress. You have 
never excluded other states from territories under 
British influence, but allowed them to go along 
with you. This policy of yours is now celebrat- 
ing one of its greatest triumphs in Egypt." 

In the following summer occurred the second 
conference at The Hague. Great Britain pro- 
posed the limitation of armaments on the sea, but 
in deference to the wishes of the German delegates 
the proposal was given formal sepulture, with 
solemn funeral rites conducted in a spirit of 



126 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

friendly consideration by the Russian president of 
the conference. 

The eager interest of German military circles 
in the construction of the Zeppelin airships in 
1908 no doubt really disturbed the British mind; 
for here was a device which, it was believed in 
Germany, would be able to float in triumph over 
the British fleet and bring to terms the coast towns 
of the island and even London itself. But Eng- 
land, under a Liberal ministry, was not inclined 
to war, and renewed the proposal of a holiday in 
fleet-building, reinforced by the importunities of 
the United States. In 1914 a treaty had amicably 
regulated the affair of the Bagdad railway. 
Even as late as July 29, 1914, three days before 
the German declaration of war, Great Britain was 
so far from being considered in Germany as the 
arch-conspirator in bringing about war that the 
Imperial German Government sought and ex- 
pected Great Britain's complete neutrality in the 
war it then intended to declare on Russia and 
France, on condition that Germany would take 
from France only her colonies and leave undis- 
turbed her territorial integrity on the continent. 
So great at that time was the confidence in Eng- 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 127 

land's disinclination for war that it was believed 
she would passively consent to Germany's forcible 
appropriation of the French colonies without even 
a pourboire in compensation for this indulgence. 

It may be useful to recall what the conditions 
actually were when the German emperor on 
August 1, 1914, declared war on Russia. Dis- 
missing from our minds for the moment all ques- 
tions regarding the underlying causes of the war, 
and without at this time attempting to pass judg- 
ment upon any of the issues involved in it, let us 
fix our attention upon the military situation as it 
existed on that fateful day when the whole 
mechanism of European security suddenly broke 
down. 

We may pass over the ultimatum to Serbia, 
Austria's invasion of Serbian territory, and Rus- 
sia's resolve to protect the small Slav state or pro- 
cure a hearing for its case as a question of Euro- 
pean interest by which armed conflict might, per- 
haps, have been avoided. On August 1, the Ger- 
man emperor had in his hands the following 
documents : 

1. A telegram from the czar, dated July 30, 



128 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

reading: "The military measures which have 
now come into force were decided five days ago 
for reasons of defense and on account of Austria's 
preparations. I hope from all my heart that 
these won't in any way interfere with your part as 
mediator, which I greatly value." 

2. A telegraphic instruction by Sir Edward 
Grey, dated July 30, directing Sir Edward 
Goschen, the British ambassador at Berlin, to say 
to the imperial German chancellor "most earn- 
estly," that "the one way of maintaining the good 
relations between England and Germany is that 
they should continue to work together to preserve 
the peace of Europe ; if we succeed in this object, 
the mutual relations of Germany and England 
will, I believe, be ipso facto improved and 
strengthened. . . . And I will say this: If the 
peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present 
crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to 
promote some arrangement to which Germany 
could be a party, by which she could be assured 
that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pur- 
sued against her or her allies by France, Russia, 
and ourselves." 

3. A telegram dated July 31, from Mr. Sazo- 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 129 

noff, Russian minister for foreign affairs, reading 
as follows: "If Austria will agree to check the 
advance of her troops on Serbian territory; if, 
recognizing that the dispute between Austria and 
Serbia has become a question of European inter- 
est, she will allow the Great Powers to look into 
the matter and decide what satisfaction Serbia 
could afford to the Austro-Hungarian Govern- 
ment without impairing her rights as a sovereign 
State or her independence, Russia will undertake 
to maintain her waiting attitude." 

4. A telegram of July 31 from Sir Edward 
Grey, reading: "If Germany could get any rea- 
sonable proposal put forward which made it clear 
that Germany and Austria were striving to pre- 
serve European peace and that Russia and France 
would be unreasonable if they rejected it, I would 
support it at St. Petersburg and Paris, and go 
the length of saying that if Russia and France 
would not accept it, His Majesty's Government 
would have nothing more to do with the conse- 
quences. " 

5. A telegram from Count Berchtold, minister 
for foreign affairs of Austria-Hungary to all Aus- 
tro-Hungarian embassies and legations, dated 



130 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

July 31, to be communicated to all governments, 
reading: "Negotiations dealing with the situa- 
tion are proceeding between the cabinets at Vienna 
and St. Petersburg, and we still hope that they 
may lead to a general understanding." 

In these circumstances, on August 1, the Ger- 
man emperor, having received no reply to his 
demand that Russian mobilization should cease 
within twelve hours, declared war on Russia, thus 
automatically involving France, Russia's ally, al- 
though knowing that France did not desire war. 
The sole reason given for this action was that 
Russia had not at that time ceased the mobiliza- 
tion of her army in defense of Serbia against Aus- 
tria's attack, there being no direct quarrel between 
Russia and Germany. How unjust was the ulti- 
matum sent on the previous day to Russia, is 
shown by the telegram of the German emperor to 
King George, on August 1, the day he declared 
war on Russia. The telegram was sent under 
the impression, which proved erroneous, that 
Great Britain was ready to guarantee the neu- 
trality of France; yet the German emperor de- 
clared that it was "too late" to stop the mobiliza- 
tion begun on that day ! The telegram reads : 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 131 

I have just received the communication of your Govern- 
ment offering French neutrality under the guarantee of 
Great Britain. To this offer there was added the question 
whether, under these conditions, Germany would refrain 
from attacking France. For technical reasons the mobil- 
ization which I have already ordered this afternoon on two 
fronts — east and west — must proceed according to the ar- 
rangements made. A counter order cannot now be given, 
as your telegram unfortunately came too late ; but if France 
offers me her neutrality, which must be guaranteed by the 
English army and navy, I will naturally give up the idea 
of an attack on France and employ my troops elsewhere. 
I hope that France will not be nervous. The troops on 
my frontier are at this moment being kept back by tele- 
graph and by telephone from crossing the French fron- 
tier. William. 

No one of these nations, it is alleged, desired a 
general war, and yet it came as a matter of mili- 
tary necessity! "I hope France will not be 
nervous. The troops on my frontier are at this 
moment being held back by telegraph and tele- 
phone from crossing the French frontier." And, 
according to Berlin, mobilization had not even 
been ordered until five o'clock of that same day! 

What a white light is poured by this last tele- 
gram upon the mechanism of destruction that had 
been so laboriously prepared ! Only one man in 



132 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Europe who could stop the war, and he caught in 
the fatal toils of his own machinery! For tech- 
nical reasons, telegram too late, German troops 
held back on the French frontier by telegraph and 
telephone — I hope France will not be nervous. 
But why this solicitude for the nerves of France ? 
Was Germany also nervous? 

I am making here no accusation. What I wish 
to emphasize is that the machinery for preserving 
peace had not been sufficiently organized, while 
the machinery of war had become so efficient as 
to be virtually uncontrollable. No one, we are 
assured, wanted war. All wanted peace. Serbia 
wanted justice. So also, it is said, did Austria. 
But Europe had not provided for justice to a small 
state. 

The time has come when Europe should reas- 
sert its moral unity and make an end of tribalism. 
All the machinery for international cooperation 
already exists, and needs only the adjustment of 
it to the purposes of peace. The railways and 
the steamships that have facilitated the mobiliza- 
tion of troops and munitions of war, the tele- 
graphic lines which have transmitted the orders 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 133 

setting great armies in motion, the vast factories 
that have been forging instruments of destruc- 
tion, are already there, waiting to convey the mer- 
chandise, communicate the messages, and produce 
the commodities of peace. The one thing lacking 
is the effective organization of international jus- 
tice. Let it once be agreed that each people shall 
be secure in its freedom and independence, and 
that nations may be as sure of justice as are in- 
dividual men in a well-organized state, and the 
transformation would be already accomplished. 

Depending, as it does, upon good faith, this 
regeneration is essentially an inner process in 
the minds and souls of men. It cannot be im- 
posed from without. It cannot be forced upon 
one nation by another. It cannot be effected by 
fighting. It will never come as the spontaneous 
act of governments. It must come from the over- 
whelming determination of the people of many 
nations to have it so. 

The real testing time of democracy will be the 
moment of victory; for victory there must be, and 
yet a victory that is not a conquest. If the claims 
of democracy in this war are to be accepted, it is 
intended to be a defense of the conquered against 



134 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

the conqueror, a protest against the ordeal of bat- 
tle as the decisive factor in determining the fate 
of nations. To invert the roles would be to aban- 
don the cause. If there is to be a commonwealth 
of nations, the Central Powers should not be ex- 
cluded from it except by their own will. The 
first article in a treaty of peace should be a state- 
ment of the principles for which we are now 
fighting in this war and the establishment of a 
commonwealth based upon them. Respect for 
treaties, the rights of the small states, the rule of 
law, the abandonment of conquests, the right of 
a people to choose its affiliations, the ultimate ex- 
tinction of militarism as a system, the submission 
of justiciable differences to a competent tribunal, 
the responsibility of states to the society of states 
— these are the essential terms of a durable treaty 
of peace. If this can be attained, there will in- 
deed be a new Europe. 

Should a nation wait to be vanquished before 
accepting such a peace ? Is it not the only peace 
in which any nation can place its trust ? Against 
any other the vanquished would be in perpetual 
revolt. But in such a peace all men would at the 
same time have the support of their own sense of 



VISION OF A COMMONWEALTH 135 

justice and secure the realization of their own 
highest ideals. It would be to all the peoples of 
Europe like a proclamation of emancipation. 
With it would come the joy of liberty, the sense of 
security, the flood-tide of human fellowship. For 
such a peace the mighty host of the dead on land 
and sea might well rejoice if they could know 
that they had bought it with their lives. 



CHAPTER V 

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE GERMAN 
EMPIRE 

WHAT is the present attitude of Germany 
toward a commonwealth of nations ? Ac- 
cording to the philosophy of the state underlying 
the practice of economic imperialism, there is to 
be no end to national antagonisms in the pursuit 
of power, and this conviction seems to have been 
intensified rather than attenuated in the minds of 
many Germans during the progress of the war. 
One of the most eminent of German historians, 
Professor Eduard Meyer of Berlin, wrote in 
1915: 

Dispelled for all time are the dreams of those well- 
intentioned visionaries who hoped for a day when the na- 
tions would be at peace forever, and all their disputes 
would be settled at the bar of an international tribunal of 
arbitration by which war would be made impossible — 
dreams that have been so widely entertained in America, 
where the people have become effeminate in their senti- 
ments in recent years. The Hague Peace Conferences, in- 

136 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 137 

stituted at the suggestion of the Czar, — how great a travesty 
in the world's history! — and the palace in which they 
were held, are a satire on the times, and subsequent events 
have fully justified Germany in her disinclination at first 
to participate in this empty farce. 1 

It was at the high tide of German victories 
that these words were written, and they serve well 
to indicate what the permanent attitude of the 
German Empire would be in case of a final Ger- 
man triumph. There would be no appeal to the 
jurists to define the equities of international life. 
"A series of long and sanguinary wars," this 
writer gravely assures us, "will mark the century 
upon which we have entered." And the reason 
for this is frankly stated. "The dominating cir- 
cumstance by which coming events will be most 
strongly influenced will be the impassable gulf 
that has opened between England and Germany, 
and their feeling of bitter enmity for each other. 
So far as we are able to scan the future," he con- 
tinues, "a reconciliation is not possible; we Ger- 
mans can never forget how England has served 
us." And for this reason the conclusion is 

1 Neither conference was, in fact, held in the so-called Palace 
of Peace. The first assembled in the House in the Wood, the 
second in the Hall of the Knights. 



138 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

reached that "the era of internationalism is past 
and will never return. It will be replaced by a 
period of vigorous and ruthless assertion of na- 
tional ambition, — the struggle of the nations with 
one another. . . . To return to the paths of In- 
ternationalism, and again sacrifice interests of 
great importance to ourselves for the sake of it, 
would be a crime against our own people." 

This deliberate repudiation of the idea of an 
international community of interests and obliga- 
tions expresses an entirely new attitude, which no 
nation in modern times has ever yet taken. It 
sweeps away with disdain the whole foundation 
upon which a society of states must be based. 
For such a society it would substitute the absolute, 
all-dominating power of an organization which 
contains in itself no standard or consciousness of 
rectitude. "To us Germans," Professor Meyer 
says, "the state is the most indispensable as well 
as the highest requisite of our earthly existence. 
. . . The state is of much higher importance than 
any individual groups, and eventually is of infi- 
nitely more value than the sum of all the indi- 
viduals within its jurisdiction." The reason 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 139 

given for this assertion is that the state "has a life 
apart; its mission is unending; and, in theory at 
least, unless it is wrecked by a force from without, 
its existence is endless, encompassing as it does all 
the generations yet to come, and welding them into 
a great unit, — the mighty life of a nation acting 
its part in the history of the world." 

This is, in substance, the state as Hegel con- 
ceived it, with the divinity left out. As now rep- 
resented, the empire is a "splendidly creative 
monarchy" possessed of absolute power, no longer 
pretending to be divine, and confessedly very 
narrowly human ; for, as this theory of empire ex- 
presses it, "the final decision in every measure 
undertaken rests with the sovereign, who there- 
fore assumes full responsibility for it, and no one 
can relieve him of it." But as the sovereign in 
this conception is the sole personal representative 
of the state, and the state is of "infinitely more 
value than the sum of all the individuals within 
its jurisdiction," there is no one entitled to hold 
him responsible, no standard by which to measure 
his responsibility. If at his command millions 
of men, no matter how many millions, are slain 
in battle, since all human beings taken together 



140 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

are of less importance than the power and pros- 
perity of the empire, no wrong is committed; and 
if there were a wrong, there would be no means 
of preventing or even of condemning it. "In 
this personal element," we are gravely assured, 
"lies the tremendous advantage that a monarchial 
government has over any other, in that it unites in 
one person the power to act for the State, together 
with the undivided responsibility to conscience for 
the consequences of the act." And thus the con- 
science of one man who holds himself accountable 
to no one, but whose interest it is by any and all 
means to extend his power, is made the measure 
of the state's responsibility. 

One has only to open the pages of the jurists 
and philosophers of an earlier time, when the 
German peoples and princes were struggling for 
their local rights and liberties against the author- 
ity of the old empire, and to reread the history of 
the contests for the "Germanic liberties," then 
held to be so dear, to realize how completely, even 
since the time of Bismarck, the conception of the 
German state has been transformed. What Ger- 
mans for centuries have bitterly fought against 
is now set forth as the highest and noblest achieve- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 141 

ment of that race. In 1913, Prince von Biilow 
was saying, "The strong control exercised by the 
authorities of Prussia has always evoked a par- 
ticularly vigorous counter-movement among the 
German people themselves." But if Professor 
Eduard Meyer is right, that control is henceforth 
to be regarded as the crowning glory of German 
achievement. The triumph of German imperial- 
ism, which at the time he wrote seemed to Pro- 
fessor Meyer so certain, would in his opinion 
create a condition in which the ultimate law for 
the German people would be the conscience of the 
German emperor. "The world in which we shall 
find ourselves after peace has been concluded," 
he says, "will be totally different from the one 
with which we have been familiar, even should 
there be no outward change, no shifting of the 
old-time boundary lines. This war is not only 
the greatest war in the history of mankind, it is 
the most epoch-making event of modern history. 
The world as we knew it before August 1, 1914, 
has ceased to be. What precedes that date seems 
to belong to a remote past, so far removed from 
us that we can hardly realize that we had a share 
in it." 



142 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

There can be no doubt that the world will 
never be the same that it was on August 1, 1914, 
when one man, responsible only to his own con- 
science, plunged Europe into war; but what is 
new and startling in Professor Meyer's concep- 
tion of the future is the intended transformation 
in the idea of the German Empire which it re- 
veals. From its inception the empire was with- 
out doubt an autocratic structure with enormously 
centralized powers ; but neither its author, Prince 
von Bismarck, nor its apologist, Prince von 
Bulow, in their most rapturous moments of devo- 
tion to their sovereigns would have called it "a 
splendid creative monarchy" in which the con- 
science of the sovereign is the highest law of the 
nation. Bismarck would have recalled that his 
own acts in creating it were performed in a man- 
ner that the conscience of William I certainly did 
not inspire, and Bulow could not have forgot- 
ten that in 1908 it was his function as imperial 
chancellor to quiet the disturbance of the public 
mind caused by the indiscreet utterances of Wil- 
liam II in the Daily Telegraph interview, and to 
pledge his own honor that he would not again 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 143 

permit the emperor to act without the responsible 
advice of his councilors. 

Before 1914 the constitution of the German 
Empire was not interpreted as a monarchy, but as 
a confederation of monarchies, which, in its own 
terms, is "an eternal alliance for the protection of 
the territory of the Confederation, and of the 
rights of the same as well as the promotion of the 
welfare of the German people. " It is a confed- 
eration of coordinate monarchs and three free 
city-republics. "To the King of Prussia," reads 
the eleventh article, "shall belong the presidency 
of the Confederation, and he shall have the title 
of German Emperor"; but he is nowhere referred 
to as a monarch except in Prussia. His imperial 
powers of control and appointment are very great, 
especially in time of war, since "all German 
troops are bound to render unconditional obedi- 
ence to the commands of the Emperor"; but his 
duties and powers, though broad, are neverthe- 
less to some extent enumerated and defined. 
They are quite definitely limited by the Bundes- 
rat, and apparently, but not really, by the popu- 
larly elected Reichstag, which is in effect a mere 



144 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

debating society, which the Germans themselves 
have named "The hall of echoes." It is of inter- 
est to note, however, that the powers of the 
Bundesrat and the Reichstag are specified in the 
constitution before the presidency is even men- 
tioned. 

The truth is that the constitution of the Ger- 
man Empire is, and probably was designed to be, 
an extremely ambiguous document capable of be- 
ing construed as creating a truly constitutional 
government, but well adapted to such perversions 
and usurpations of power as an autocratic ruler, 
especially in time of war and in absolute com- 
mand of an immense and well-disciplined army, 
might choose to make. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that the war has 
developed new interpretations of the imperial con- 
stitution, and that in the hours of apparent vic- 
tory the Byzantinism that even in time of peace 
had become so conspicuous among the German 
functionaries and aspirants to imperial favor 
should be exaggerated, with the result of attribut- 
ing to the emperor powers which the people never 
supposed that he legally possessed; for, although 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 145 

it was the sovereigns and not the people of Ger- 
many who made the constitution of the empire, 
the people have assumed that it was made in their 
interest and not for their enslavement. 

The recent revelation that the war may not 
bring forth a German victory has created a wide- 
spread interest in the real meaning of the consti- 
tution and a new desire for popular control of the 
government. The German Empire is undoubt- 
edly on the brink of changes which are at present 
incalculable, for the character of these changes 
will depend upon the eventualities of the war. A 
German defeat would unquestionably result in 
radical revision of the constitutional organization 
of the empire and important restrictions upon the 
powers of the emperor, not excluding a possibil- 
ity of even more fundamental changes. If, on 
the other hand, the Central Powers suffer no seri- 
ous defeat, and especially if the plans of the Pan- 
Germanists are in any important degree success- 
ful, it is with this new conception of imperial au- 
tocracy that the rest of the world will hereafter 
have to contend. The complete triumph of the 
Central Powers would mean the triumph of the 



146 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Prussian monarchy, and would confirm its su- 
premacy over the entire German Empire and its 
present allies. 

It is of the highest importance to the peace of 
the world to take into account the critical situa- 
tion which is created for Europe by this new con- 
ception which the war has generated of the Ger- 
man Empire as "a splendid creative monarchy." 
There is in this conception no repudiation of the 
Pan-German plans of expansion. On the con- 
trary, there is an explicit assertion that if they are 
now destined to be defeated, the world's peace 
will suffer for it, since nothing short of an im- 
perial victory will prevent the prospect of future 
wars. The "hammer and anvil" philosophy of 
history is vigorously reasserted, and Germany in- 
tends to be always the hammer and never the 
anvil. "It is impossible," writes Professor 
Meyer, "to pierce the veil that hides the future, 
and to foretell that which will come to pass. Yet 
even now every German must clearly discern that, 
if the German nation would maintain its position 
in the world, there are three things that we must 
cleave to as the inviolable basis of our independ- 
ent and vigorous existence." These, he says, are 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 147 

"our military organization, our economic organ- 
ization, together with protection for our agricul- 
tural industries, for by these the necessities of life 
are assured to us and we are made independent 
of supplies from abroad; and, lastly, a virile 
monarchial government, wholly independent to 
act, that it may be free to combine and utilize 
in creative activity all the forces of which the na- 
tion is capable. For the beneficent results of this 
activity we had every reason to be grateful,'' he 
concludes, "when the outbreak of the war found 
us fully supplied with material and thoroughly 
prepared, while every day that the war continues 
gives us renewed evidence of its efficiency." 

It is, in fact, the efficiency of the German Em- 
pire in war, its perfection as a form of power, that 
constitutes its great merit in this writer's eyes, for 
the end of the state is power, not only creative and 
constructive power, but destructive power as well. 
"The truth of the whole matter undoubtedly is," 
he says, "that the time has arrived when two dis- 
tinct forms of state organization" — the German 
and the English — "must face each other in a 
struggle for life or death." They cannot, it 



148 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

seems, longer live together in the same world. 

It is then with this new Germany, if she is vic- 
torious — always prepared for war, trusting only 
to the sword, believing in the necessity of future 
wars, bent on "creative activity" in the develop- 
ment of her " vigorous existence," under the com- 
mand of "one man wholly independent to act," 
and opposed to internationalism, — that, if this 
interpretation of imperial purpose is correct, the 
other nations of the earth will have to live. If 
there is to be peace, Germany contends, it must 
be a peace imposed by the conqueror in which 
other forms of state organization will have to 
yield to imperial supremacy. Such is the claim, 
and such is the boast. 

Certainly, this is not the old Germany that we 
knew and loved, the teacher of music and poetry, 
science and philosophy, art and literature. A 
thousand memories of kindly faces and sweet 
voices and delicate attentions flood in upon our 
minds as we compare the present with the past. 
The land of song, the home of the humanities, 
the embodiment of Gemutlichkeit, are they really 
gone forever? And what has any one done to 
Germany that she should now wish to estrange 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 149 

herself from all the world? Does she really re- 
pudiate internationalism? Hereafter will there 
be in the world no welcome ports for her great 
fleets of merchantmen as of old? Shall we not 
again sail the wide ocean with her great captains ? 
Shall we not learn again of the great masters who 
have been our teachers? Tear out that page, 
Professor Meyer, and write it in another mood. 
What can the German Empire expect of a world 
in which there is no internationalism? What is 
to be its place among the nations? And whose 
fault is it that there is to be no internationalism? 
Who has been the first to violate treaties? Who 
has been the first to decline to let Europe decide 
what was from its very nature a European ques- 
tion? Who first declared war in the midst of 
negotiations? Who first proceeded not against 
an enemy in arms, but against an unarmed and 
neutralized people? Who first challenged all 
neutrals by a campaign of Rightfulness in which 
innocent non-combatants, men, women, and even 
little children, were shattered into fragments by 
explosions, or mercilessly drowned in the sea? 
Is the right to live in the world a question for the 
conscience of one man ? Shall the burden of guilt 



150 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

in the struggle for empire be made to rest upon 
one human being and not fall also upon those 
who have intended to profit by it ? And, finally, 
can it be expected that the world will remain 
friendly with a nation that organizes assassina- 
tion as a means to power? 

We may as well frankly recognize the fact first 
as last, that German imperial aggression does not 
grow entirely out of the adoration of a dynasty 
nor out of its compulsion, nor is it purely the re- 
sult of a philosophic theory of the state. It is 
because dynasties serve national purposes that 
they are invested with peculiar sanctity, and it is 
because an imperial government can increase the 
power of a people over other peoples that the aid 
of philosophy is invoked to sustain its prestige. 
When we appeal to history the evidence of this is 
overwhelming. What has reconciled Germany 
to the overlordship of Prussia is the material ad- 
vantages that have been derived from German 
unity. For the wave of conquest, which orig- 
inally proceeded from the Mark Brandenburg 
and derived the name of Prussia (Bo-Russia) 
from the annexation of a Slavic province of Po- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 151 

land obtained by a union of war and diplomacy, 
there is no sentiment of reverence in the German 
heart. The Germans know too well their own 
history. An empire ruled by Prussia would have 
been repudiated in the first decades of its exist- 
ence had it not brought extensive economical ad- 
vantages to all the German states. This it un- 
doubtedly has done, and the appreciation of it is 
heightened by the expectation that the centralized 
power of a unified Germany will procure further 
gains to the German people, new employment for 
their labor, new markets for their goods, new re- 
sources for their exploitation. The Pan-Ger- 
manist program is not really founded on race 
affinity or sentiment of any kind. It aims at the 
extension of the empire because it is regarded as 
a fruitful tree, the growth of which will not only 
cast a protecting shade, but bear rich fruits for 
the German people. 

This aspect of German imperialism is well 
illustrated in such works as Dr. Friedrich Nau- 
mann's "Central Europe" ("Mittel-Europa") 
and Professor Harms on "Germany's Share in the 
World's Trade"; the latter manifesting a very 
lively sense of the economic importance to Ger- 



152 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

many of international trade, and of the disadvan- 
tage that would be incurred if foreign markets 
were lost to her. 

It is Dr. Naumann, however, whose circle of 
readers is very wide and whose authority as a 
popular writer and as a member of the Reichstag 
is very great, who best interprets the dominat- 
ing thought in current German political plans 
for the future. Writing in the midst of war and 
under the inspiration of war, he presents to us 
his vision of a new Central Europe great enough 
and strong enough to hold an undisputed place 
in the midst of permanently hostile nations, giv- 
ing to Deutschtum a rock-ribbed security in which 
to abide its time for that military development 
and that economic expansion to which he believes 
that the German peoples are entitled. Only in 
the midst of war, it is contended, could the mind 
be prepared to comprehend the need and the im- 
port of such a vast conception; for Mittel-Europa 
— the further extended, further energized, and 
further fortified Teutonic empire of the future — 
could never even be conceived by the ordinary 
every-day spirit. "As Bismarck, in the midst 
of the war of 1870 and not after it had ended, be- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 153 

held a vision of the German Empire," he writes, 
"so in the midst of war, in the flowing of blood 
and the commotion of peoples, will be laid by our 
statesmen the foundations of the new construc- 
tion." 

What then is this new imperial edifice to in- 
clude? It is, in the words of its projector, to 
consist in nothing less than "the coalescence of 
those states which belong neither to the Anglo- 
French Alliance nor to the Russian Empire; but, 
above all, the combination of the German Empire 
and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, since 
all further plans for the uniting of the Central 
European peoples depend upon the success at- 
tending the union of the two Central States." 

The necessity for this union, Naumann thinks, 
is absolute, for the reason that the day for the 
role of small states in history is forever past. In 
the old Europe the small states had a natural 
place. Germany was entirely composed of them, 
but, always discordant, they presented a shifting 
picture of struggling princes, each actuated by 
his own interest and rarely forming combinations 
of historical significance. Like clouds they sud- 
denly gathered and as suddenly were dissipated. 



154 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

The so-called Holy Roman Empire of the Ger- 
man Nation, in which the German states nomi- 
nally existed, was under the house of Hapsburg 
utterly devoid of unity, the greater half nearly 
always subject to foreign influence insinuated un- 
der the pretense of protecting them against the 
authority of the empire of which they formed a 
part. 

To-day, under the pressure of a common hos- 
tility, the German Empire, unified by Prussia, 
and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, feel- 
ing their common necessity of cooperation, are 
aware of being united in a struggle for their ex- 
istence. No longer is separatism to be defended. 
War has created a Central European soul, which 
must now, he thinks, take on a body fitted to its 
needs. 

But it is not a mere temporary exigency that 
has brought about this result. Great business 
has necessitated great politics, and the organiza- 
tion of the state must correspond to them. We 
must, says Naumann, as Cecil Rhodes expressed 
it, "think in continents." Sovereignty in any 
real sense can hardly any longer be ascribed to 
the little peoples. Without allies they are noth- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 155 

ing. Isolation is weakness and danger. Even 
Prussia, alone, is too small for a modern state. 
"The State," Treitschke taught, "is power"; and 
he added, "There is something laughable in the 
idea of a small State." No doubt amidst the 
battle of giants it may seem laughable for the 
physically feeble to demand freedom or even jus- 
tice, and yet, as has been well said, "there is 
something unpardonably brutal in such laugh- 
ter." There being no historical role for the small 
states according to this philosophy, they do not 
enter at all into the groundwork of Central Eu- 
rope. They would prove too independent, too 
refractory, and certainly too feebly inspired by 
the imperial spirit, to be combined in the active 
and potent nucleus of power required for the real- 
ization of this great political conception. Italy, 
if it were more amenable to Teutonic influence, 
might be an acceptable acquisition; but, at pres- 
ent, it is too Latin in its affinities to be incor- 
porated in the body of Central Europe. Like 
Holland, Switzerland, the Balkan States, Tur- 
key and the Scandinavian countries, Italy is on 
the whole too peripheral to form a vital organ in 
this new organism. All these countries, despite 



156 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

the greatly enhanced quantitative conception of 
the modern state as a great power, " since they still 
have before them historical waiting-time for their 
decision,' ' are to be held for the time being in 
solution. The first and pressing necessity is to 
create that nucleus of Central Europe — the com- 
bination of the German Empire and Austria- 
Hungary — around which the little states may 
ultimately crystallize; for these, Naumann thinks, 
when they once "see with open eyes'' what their 
future position will be, will one by one seek safety 
and advantage by adhering to the Central Powers. 

Such, in outline, is Naumann's program for 
the future. It is a program only, but it is one 
upon which he expends a lavish art in order to 
give it all possible attractiveness. 

In his estimation, the critical moment, will be 
in the negotiations for peace. What the terms of 
peace will be he prudently does not attempt to 
say; but whatever they are, "whether the outer 
limits of the central empires of Middle Europe 
are to be bent somewhat more toward the West 
or toward the East, upon the ground of military 
triumph, the question in all circumstances re- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 157 

mains : whether the plenipotentiaries from Berlin, 
Vienna, and Budapest leave the hall of the Peace 
Congress as clear, true friends or as secret 
enemies. " "We wish," he continues, "that they 
return to their peoples with the solution: 'Eter- 
nally undivided.' " 

In that case no doubt Europe will enter upon 
a period of development differing widely from 
the past. But will that union be achieved ? No 
one better than the projector of Central Europe 
understands that the answer to the question can 
not be certain. "All wars of coalition since re- 
mote antiquity," he says, "have been attended 
with difficult conclusions of peace, for they have 
always ended with gains and losses that must be 
reconciled with one another." Such a peace as 
that of 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, Naumann 
insists, must not be repeated. The one really 
great trophy of the war will be wrapped up in the 
question of permanent union. If the Austro- 
Hungarian Monarchy and the German Empire 
can be kept asunder, that will be for the En- 
tente Powers a great and permanent victory. If, 
on the other hand, they unite to form a new 
Central Europe, the sons of Germany and 



158 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Austria-Hungary, he thinks, will not have died in 
vain. 

It is not, however, a general reorganization of 
national life and a better assurance of general 
peace that are expected from the coalescence of 
the Central empires. It is rather their mutual 
defense and a quicker and firmer preparation for 
new military emergencies. In the negotiations 
for peace, it is admitted, each of the belligerents 
will seek its freedom as well as its advantage; 
but, insists Naumann, "it is an unhistorical form 
of apprehension if one believes that five or eight 
Great Powers will leave the hall of the Peace 
Congress without already having new treaties in 
their pockets." In any case, it will not, he 
thinks, be the beginning of everlasting peace. 
There will be pacific endeavors and perhaps new 
assurances; but there will remain unsettled an 
incredible number of new as well as old questions 
that will awaken solicitude for the future. "All 
the ministries of war, all the general staffs, all 
the admiralties," Naumann contends, "will re- 
flect upon the lessons of the war when it is over; 
a still more scientific technique will invent new 
weapons; the frontier strongholds will be made 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 159 

broader and more extended." And the inference 
from all this is that no single state can remain 
alone. The German Empire and the Austro- 
Hungarian Monarchy, if they are to survive, he 
urges, must combine for their mutual safety and 
support. 

This necessity arises in part from their terri- 
torial unity, viewed from an orographical point 
of view. Nature, from the North Sea and the 
Baltic to the Alps, the Adriatic, and the southern 
plain of the Danube, has so ordained it. "Open 
the map," says Naumann, "and see what lies be- 
tween the Vistula and the Vosges, what between 
Galicia and the Bodensee! This area can be 
conceived only as a unit, as a well-articulated 
brother-land, as a confederation of defense, as a 
self-sufficing economic district. Here must all 
historic particularism in the stress of the world- 
war so far vanish that it confirms the idea of 
unity." 

And as unity is favored, so must it be perma- 
nently secured by physical conditions. What 
these conditions are the war has revealed. The 
best-established result of a technical military 
character is that in the future fighting will be 



160 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

only in long-drawn-out lines, and trenches will 
furnish the basis of the defense of the Father- 
land. The policy of the trench consists in this, 
that every state must calculate within what 
limits it can or cannot establish its trench-de- 
fense position. Had the French entrenched them- 
selves from Belfort to Dunkirk, it is asserted, the 
invasion of France through Belgium would prob- 
ably have proved impossible. The same, it is 
insisted, holds good for the East Prussian and 
Austro-Galician frontiers. After the war fron- 
tier entrenchments will everywhere be erected 
where the possibilities of war are present. New 
Chinese walls must arise if the nations are to live 
in friendship. Two long walls from north to 
south will divide the European continent into 
three strips. The Middle European question is 
whether between the walls running north and 
south still another between Germany and Aus- 
tria-Hungary will be needed. Naumann urges 
that if the unity of future policies is not secured, 
the necessity will be imperative; but, if thus ren- 
dered necessary, it will be in the highest degree 
injurious and full of evil portent for both sides. 
Inclusion or exclusion — these are the alterna- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 161 

tives offered to Austria by this new system of for- 
tified insularity, here presented as the only possi- 
ble method of securing friendly relations. What 
is it that demands these insurmountable barriers 
between nation and nation? Is it utter de- 
spair of all moral and legal means of reconcilia- 
tion between them? Whence, then, this inerad- 
icable incompatibility between the nations east 
and west of these mural barricades? What is 
it that makes it necessary for all the future to 
part them by impassable and eternally guarded 
moats? It is, apparently, that Central Europe 
may be thus established as a consolidated Teu- 
tonic power rendered forever independent of those 
voluntary concessions, adjustments, and agree- 
ments by which contiguous peoples have hitherto 
regulated their conduct. But why should a na- 
tion seek this exemption from the ordinary con- 
ditions of human existence in a social state? Is 
it merely as a means of defense? Is it to pre- 
serve from violation the sacred principle of na- 
tionality? Is it to maintain intact a pure and 
disinterested neutrality in the midst of a warring 
world ? 

Not one of these last mentioned considerations 



162 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

is advanced as a reason for this consolidation and 
immurement. There is no discussion even of 
the possible basis of pacific readjustments, no 
proposal to restore autonomy to the suppressed 
nationalities in the German and Austro-Hungar- 
ian realms, no thought whatever for the Poles, 
Czechs, Rumanians, and others already immured 
within these empires, no reference to neutrality 
except to point out that the trench policy will 
render it more difficult for the small states to 
remain neutral, and thus will tend to draw them 
into the circle of the Central Powers. It is as- 
sumed throughout that the only possible bonds 
of union and the only possible conditions of 
friendly relationship are of a purely mechanical 
nature. The little states, it is emphasized, be- 
ing incapable of the system of entrenchment on 
account of its cost and their natural environment, 
will be left without defense, and therefore will 
constitute available raw material for further 
economic exploitation. When Central Europe is 
organized and fortified those states that, to use 
Naumann's words, "belong neither to the Anglo- 
French Confederation nor to the Russian Em- 
pire" are to 'fall like ripe fruit, without effort 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 163 

or sacrifice on the part of the new imperial union, 
into its outstretched hands. 

With almost anxious particularity it is insisted 
that no such thought as this antedated the war 
either at Berlin or Vienna, much less entered into 
the causation of it. In the German Empire, it 
is frankly stated, existed the thought that some- 
time there must come an accounting with Russia, 
and also that sometime there must be a fight with 
England concerning sea power. These eventuali- 
ties, he admits, were already prepared for in the 
mind of the German Government and of the 
German people. The new development was that 
there suddenly and unexpectedly rushed together 
as in a mighty flood the war with Russia, the 
war with France, and the war on the sea. In 
the war with France and the war on the sea Aus- 
tria-Hungary had no part, but with very press- 
ing Balkan, Slav, and Italian perils. Thus two 
great interests unexpectedly blended, and the 
three wars became virtually one. Nevertheless, 
owing to this duality of origin, the conflict has 
had a different aspect as seen from Vienna, 
Budapest, and Berlin. At first the idea of com- 
mon statehood and common responsibility in all 



164 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

directions was wanting ; but the war has generated 
it and has proved that it is not merely a German 
war or a Danube war, but the historical test of 
Central Europe. 

"The war unites!" exclaims Naumann; but 
he comprehends fully what contrarieties are to 
be blended, what antagonisms are to be overcome 
if Central Europe is to emerge from the struggle 
as a political unit. He acknowledges that Aus- 
tria-Hungary is filled with particularism and the 
strife of partly submerged nationalities, while 
Germany is a new unity tending toward further 
centralization. Germany, from a loose confed- 
eration, has become a federal state ; Austria-Hun- 
gary is a confederacy formed of independent, but 
conventionally united, monarchies. Germany, it 
is noted, is more northern, colder, more uniform, 
more technical; Austria-Hungary more southern, 
gayer, more temperamental, more romantic. Ger- 
many is for the most part Protestant, Austria- 
Hungary for the most part Catholic. Austria- 
Hungary possesses more of the past, and perhaps 
more of the future, but Germany more of the 
present. The rhythm of life is different. It is 
as if east and west, north and south, the eighteenth 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 165 

century and the twentieth century were all to be 
melted together. 

Whatever the contradictions of nature or in- 
clination, concludes Naumann, the future exist- 
ence of the two empires depends upon their union. 
Neither has any other possible ally upon whom 
it can with confidence depend. Their combina- 
tion is therefore a reciprocal necessity. 

Of the two, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 
contains the greater quantity of racial diversi- 
ties and nationalist aspirations; yet this may not 
prove a cause of disruption, for union with a 
strong power is essential to the existence of these 
submerged nationalities. The Czechs, Morav- 
ians, Poles, Serbs, Croats and Slovaks, and even 
the Magyars alone, would be too feeble to main- 
tain their national independence in isolation. 
From the nature of things, it is asserted, their 
future contentions are bound to be in the sphere 
of domestic rather than in that of foreign poli- 
tics. Only under the protection and by the in- 
dulgence of their alleged oppressors could they 
indulge in patriotic declamation. Tolerance 
would be less dangerous and perhaps less neces- 
sary in the projected new Central Europe, for 



166 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Prussian advice and, if needed, Prussian assist- 
ance, would be at hand to complete the process of 
absorption and assimilation. Having Prussian- 
ized Germany, what would forbid the ultimate 
Prussianization of all Central Europe ? Are not 
the Prussians themselves of Slavic origin? 

There is, in fact, in this great scheme of em- 
pire, an almost ostentatious suppression of 
Deutschland iiber Alles. The project does not 
disclose, except by inference, the holy mission of 
German Kultur in the redemption of the world. 
On the contrary, there is, in appearance at least, 
no emphasis of nationality. For this there are 
obvious reasons. "It is, of course, understood," 
says Naumann, "that in belligerent Germany all 
our old heroic memories rise up from the grave, 
and we behold brought before us the Prussian 
King Frederick II, Moltke, and Bismarck. We 
struggle as Germans, but we struggle together 
with millions of non-Germans, who are prepared 
to go with us in battle and in death, if they are 
respected by us, and if they are permitted to be- 
lieve that our victory is at the same time their 
victory." 

It is chiefly upon this belief and the sense of 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 167 

freely acting together that reliance is placed for 
the constitution of Central Europe. That is why 
a political union is deemed possible in time of 
war that would be utterly impossible in a time 
of peace. It is not considered as at all an affair 
of chancelleries or parliaments. It could not be 
secured by merely formal treaties. In such en- 
gagements there is always too little or too much, 
and there is and can be, Naumann thinks, no as- 
surance that mere treaties will always be respected. 
It is in the actual identity of aim and aspiration 
of peoples, not in the artificial agreements of 
cabinets, that a true bond of union must be 
sought. "Security," he says, "lies in the many- 
sidedness of political, economic, and personal liv- 
ing together; in the spontaneous and organized 
overflow of one body politic into the other ; in the 
community of ideas, of history, of culture, of 
labor, of conceptions of right, — of a thousand 
great and small things. Only when we reach this 
condition, shall we be firmly bound together." 

There is deep insight in this conception of the 
prerequisites of union. Nothing fruitful can be 
hoped for from any form of human government or 
from any political and especially any interna- 



168 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

tional combination that is not founded upon the 
character, the interests, and the aims of those 
affected by it. It is, therefore, timely for Aus- 
tro-Hungarians to consider whether a union that 
confessedly could be conceived only in a time 
of war is the most advantageous for the dual mon- 
archy in a time of peace. 

It is evident that Austria-Hungary is the weak 
point in the Pan-German scheme of southeastern 
expansion. Without the practical subordination 
of the dual monarchy to the control of the Im- 
perial German Government the dream of a Ham- 
burg-to-Bagdad railroad, with German ports on 
all the southern seas, vanishes into thin air. It 
is for this reason that Naumann has written his 
book, for he comprehends perfectly that, left to 
themselves, neither Austria nor Hungary, much 
less the latter, can be easily persuaded to regard 
the scheme of union which he urges as conform- 
able either to their character, their interest, or 
their national aims, for it would clearly involve 
their ultimate extinction as separate nations. It 
is doubtful if they could be voluntarily induced to 
enter into so close a partnership with so predom- 
inant a partner as the Imperial German Govern- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 169 

ment. Already there are signs of restlessness un- 
der existing Prussian control. The Austro-Hun- 
garian response to the project of a Central Eu- 
rope under Prussian headship has thus far not 
been encouraging to Berlin. For this reason, in 
order to realize the Hamburg-to-Bagdad hege- 
mony, with the control which this involves, the 
Imperial German Government would, no doubt, 
gladly free its hands for the purpose of enforcing 
this result by surrendering for the present every 
advantage thus far obtained in the west, with the 
intention of later recovering all that would be 
temporarily abandoned in France and Belgium. 

The fate not only of Austria-Hungary and their 
submerged nationalities, but that of Greece, the 
Balkan States, the Ottoman Empire, and even 
that of Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and the 
Scandinavian kingdoms, will be determined by 
the settlement of this Mid-European question. 
Once organized, as German science and skill 
could organize the Central Europe that Naumann 
has delineated, it would not only become the over- 
lord of the entire European continent, but the most 
formidable maritime power that has ever existed. 

It is this dream of dominating Europe that has 



170 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

inspired the Imperial German Government, on 
the one hand, to propose negotiations for peace, 
and, on the other, vigorously to continue the war 
in the hope that one or another of its opponents 
may be eliminated from the conflict. It is this 
also that furnishes the ground for the hostility to 
internationalism. German economic imperial- 
ism is as little inclined as the Prussian dynasty to 
take a place in the world regulated by general 
agreements. "We never concealed our doubts 
that peace could be guaranteed permanently by 
international organizations such as arbitration 
courts," said the imperial chancellor, Bethmann- 
Hollweg, in speaking to a committee of the Reich- 
stag; and his attitude on this subject has com- 
manded virtually universal assent in Germany. 

There is something disconcerting to the rest of 
the world in this fierce spirit of Teutonic tribal- 
ism that seems not even to desire a wider friend- 
ship. The disposition to reject all international 
relations, the dependence on mechanical, eco- 
nomic, and military force, and the total absence 
of the humanism which characterized the old 
Germany that we knew and loved — it is these 
things that render this transfigured German Em- 



TRANSFIGURATION OF EMPIRE 171 

pire weird and strange and at the same time for- 
midable — like a giant caveman, dwelling apart, 
toiling in his waking hours in preparation for 
battle, and in his sleep dreaming of enemies and 
hostilities, as the chief preoccupations of exist- 
ence. 



CHAPTER VI 
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

NOTWITHSTANDING the German dis- 
trust of arbitration courts, Chancellor von 
Bethmann-Hollweg has pointed out the conclusion 
at which all human intelligence must arrive when 
it devotes itself to a serious examination of in- 
ternational relations. He says: 

If at and after the end of the war the world will only 
become fully conscious of the horrifying destruction of life 
and property, then through the whole of humanity there 
will ring a cry for peaceful arrangements and under- 
standings which, as far as they are within human power, 
will prevent the return of such a monstrous catastrophe. 
This cry will be so powerful and so justified that it must 
lead to some result. 

What then is that result to be? It cannot be 
the domination of any single nation. That is a 
form of peace to which the world will not sub- 
mit. 

172 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 173 

If men were ruled by pure intelligence, it would 
not be difficult to make a permanent end of war 
and its devastations; but experience has shown 
that neither those who govern nor those who are 
governed are purely intellectual beings. There 
is in the nature of every man, and hence in the 
composition of every nation, an element of rea- 
son; but there are also instincts, emotions, and 
passions. Some of these arise from the limita- 
tions and necessities of nature as a complex of 
active forces governed by the great laws of strug- 
gle, selection, and survival. In addition to these 
there are also fortuitous associations of ideas, 
tribal traditions, and inherent prejudices that 
have their origin outside the sphere of conscious 
mental processes. Nations as well as men have 
their inheritance of natural traits which assimi- 
late them to different species of animals, such as 
the wolf, the fox, and the lamb. In consequence, 
the probable conduct of certain races of men may 
be made the subject of calculation almost as cer- 
tain as that resulting from the study of the in- 
stinctive life of birds and beasts upon which su- 
perior intelligence bases its powers of capture 
and control. 



174 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

In the seclusion of their studies, philosophers, 
beginning with a few a priori principles of rea- 
son, find it an easy task to construct in their minds 
a universal state, or so to conceive the relations 
of separate states to one another as to conclude 
that nothing is simpler than to realize an ulti- 
mate federation of the world. On the contrary, 
those who have been close observers of human 
nature and especially those who have come in 
contact with many varied populations in many 
different countries find it difficult to believe that 
either a universal state or a perfect harmony of all 
separate states will ever be possible unless human 
nature is radically changed. They perceive the 
fatalities in national existence which prevent the 
triumph of international ideals, and they wonder 
how other men of great intelligence can fancy 
that a plan of cooperation is, in effect, almost ac- 
complished simply because it has been consistently 
and logically thought out. 

As a result of the present European conflict 
and its revelation of national aims and purposes, 
there will, no doubt, be urged upon all nations a 
deeper consideration of the causes of international 
strife, and elaborate plans will be proposed for 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 175 

securing more perfect international harmony. 
Unquestionably the moral sense of all intelligent 
men will be profoundly stirred, and the iniquity 
as well as the irrationality of war between civil- 
ized nations will be deeply impressed upon them. 
But this will not be a new experience. In mod- 
ern times the atrocities accompanying great wars 
have never failed to call forth projects for a thor- 
oughgoing reorganization of the world. Thus it 
was that in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, 
Emeric Cruce proposed that Venice be chosen as 
the permanent seat of a corps of ambassadors 
whose votes should settle all international differ- 
ences. It was during the "Robber Wars" of 
Louis XIV that William Penn, whom Montes- 
quieu called "the modern Lycurgus," propounded 
his plans for universal peace. It was at the con- 
clusion of the struggle for the Spanish succession 
that Fenelon presented to the Congress of Utrecht 
his famous dissertation, in which he said : 

Neighboring states are not only under obligation to treat 
one another according to the rules of justice and good 
faith; they ought in addition, for their own safety, as 
well as for the common interest, to form a kind of general 
society and republic. 



176 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

It was upon the same occasion that the Abbe 
de Saint-Pierre elaborated his extension of Sully's 
alleged " Grand Design," in which — anticipating 
the purpose of the present program of the League 
to Enforce Peace — he proposed not only the sub- 
mission of differences to judicial decision, but the 
total abolition of the separate use of force, and 
the agreement that in case of a refusal to observe 
treaties or to obey rules and judgments imposed 
the other members of the alliance should compel a 
refractory sovereign to comply by arming unitedly 
against him and charging to his account the ex- 
pense of this forcible constraint. It was during 
Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Italy that Im- 
manuel Kant published his famous essay on 
"Eternal Peace." 

It would be tedious to examine or even to re- 
state the numerous schemes that have been pro- 
posed for insuring peace and harmony among the 
nations. Almost without exception they have as- 
sumed that the basis of reorganization is exclu- 
sively political, and that there must therefore be 
instituted what is equivalent to a superstate, a 
new sovereignty set above the national state as 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 177 

this is set over its constituent members. For this 
purpose it has been considered by many necessary 
to establish not only an international legislature 
and an international judiciary, but also an in- 
ternational executive in command of armies and 
navies or at least controlling such an armed force 
as would constitute an effective international 
police, but generally without a very clear notion of 
what its extent would have to be. 

It is advisable to dismiss at the outset such a 
futility as this superstate would be. A universal 
world state of this description would imply the 
sudden annihilation of all the national charac- 
teristics that differentiate, for example, Turkey 
from Switzerland, or France from the German 
Empire. The proposal to federate such dispar- 
ate political units would invoke prompt resist- 
ance on every hand. 

Only approximately identical types of govern- 
ment are eligible for any real international or- 
ganization, which in order to constitute an organ- 
ism must be composed of mutually adaptable 
organs. In brief, the component parts must be 
expressions of a common life. Absolute and con- 
stitutional states do not belong to the same species 



178 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

of bodies politic. There is between them an in- 
herent hostility. An attempt to unite them in a 
league to enforce peace would result in generating 
new causes of war. This attempt has already 
been made, and it ended in dismal failure. The 
Holy Alliance was organized to sustain the high- 
est international ideals of the signatory powers, 
having "No other object than to publish, in the 
face of the whole world, their fixed resolution, 
both in the administration of their respective 
States, and in their political relations with every 
other Government, to take for their sole guide the 
precepts of the holy religion our Saviour teaches, 
namely the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity, 
and Peace." Yet Great Britain and France could 
not enter into this alliance, which had for its 
real object to secure tranquillity by crushing out 
all movements toward national independence and 
constitutional development. As Alison Phillips 
has clearly shown in his work on "The Confedera- 
tion of Europe," "the effective working of an in- 
ternational federal system demands a far greater 
uniformity of political institutions and ideas 
among the nations of the world than at present 
exists." 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 179 

The fundamental difference between states, as 
has already been pointed out, is to be found in the 
conception of sovereignty. In the case of the con- 
stitutional states there has been a limitation of 
the power of the sovereign, and in the great democ- 
racies there has been some modification in the 
conception of sovereignty itself. In the United 
States, for example, there has been much dispute 
regarding the question w T hether sovereignty be- 
longs to the Federal Government or to the sepa- 
rate States. The truth is that in its absolute 
sense of unlimited power it belongs to neither, 
not even to the people, whose expressed convic- 
tions on the subject constitute a declaration that 
government exists only "to secure the rights of 
the governed," and is therefore essentially limited. 
This is the doctrine of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and of all the bills of rights, in which 
the idea of sovereignty has no explicit recogni- 
tion; and this word, which the American system 
would never have invented, has been made the 
subject of extended discussion with the result 
that while some authority is seen to belong to 
the Federal Government and some to the state 
governments, their relation is one of coordination 



180 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

and not one of unqualified and absolute su- 
premacy. In international affairs it has never 
been seriously pretended that the authority of the 
United States in any respect exceeds what, as the 
Declaration of Independence expresses it, "in- 
dependent States may of right do." 

It is evident that autocratic powers, basing their 
authority upon the postulates of absolutism, will 
not and logically cannot accept this view of es- 
sentially limited state authority and the conse- 
quent existence of inherent and binding interna- 
tional obligations, for the reason that these limi- 
tations and obligations are from their point of 
view encroachments upon the unlimited will of 
the sovereign. 

It may be said that these limitations and ob- 
ligations cease to be encroachments when they 
are freely and explicitly accepted by the sover- 
eign, and that, therefore, obligations, when thus 
accepted, are as binding between absolute govern- 
ments as between constitutional governments. 
But this observation evades the fundamental is- 
sue which is whether there are any obligations 
growing out of the essential nature of the state 
that should control the relations and conduct of 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 181 

sovereign states that they may not by an arbitrary 
act of will reject ; for if there are obligations that 
are inherently binding between them because of 
the nature of the state, a state, though sovereign, 
cannot be free to reject them; but if, on the con- 
trary, as the absolutist theory of the state con- 
tends, the sovereignty of the state is unlimited, 
such a state is bound only by its will, which is 
casual and changeable. Its will to reject an 
obligation is as absolute as its will to accept 
it. 

It is, therefore, only through a modification of 
the idea of absolute sovereignty that any hope can 
be found for the permanent and pacific organi- 
zation of mankind. Unless we start out with the 
postulate that the state is founded upon the in- 
herent rights of its citizens, and therefore reaches 
its limits of authority where their collective rights 
of safety and possession end, we shall have no 
constructive principle upon which to base a better 
organization of the world. The right of arbi- 
trary aggressive force once admitted, no matter 
how noble and elevated its aims may be, im- 
perialism has triumphed; and, if imperialism is 



182 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

to triumph, it will create its own rules of action in 
defiance of international law. 

As the basis of any practicable scheme of world 
organization, it is necessary to lay down the post- 
ulate that every free community of men may form 
a government for the protection of their inher- 
ent rights. But this fundamental political right, 
which we call by the ambiguous name "sover- 
eignty" is by no means an unlimited right. It is 
necessarily limited by the similar right of other 
coexistent communities; and from the constitu- 
tional point of view it is further limited by the 
fact that there are inherent personal rights which 
no government may justly take away. 

It is, therefore, utterly useless to expect that 
any plan of international government that will 
be really effective can be successfully carried into 
practice with governments that adhere to the ab- 
solute conception of sovereignty. No treaty can 
bind them, for they always reserve the right to 
break it whenever they consider it in their interest 
to do so. No international law can control 
them, for they will not admit that it is law unless 
it is an absolute decree of sovereign power. No 
congress or conference can overrule them, for 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 183 

these, in their view, possess no authority. All 
contractual relations entered into with powers 
which hold themselves not subject to moral law 
are therefore written in running water. They 
have no value whatever. What can be expected 
of a power that claims to possess an unlimited 
right of national expansion, restrained only by 
the extent of its ability to carry its projects into 
execution by an assault upon its neighbors ? The 
polite expression for this exalted privilege is "lib- 
erty of national evolution." But what does lib- 
erty of national evolution mean if not freedom to 
do what a particular nation desires to do with- 
out the restraint of the collective interests of other 
powers and the limitations imposed by fixed prin- 
ciples of law? 

It is evident, then, that any effective form of 
international government implies the renuncia- 
tion, to some extent at least, of absolute sover- 
eignty. To what extent must this renunciation 
be carried? Certainly not to the extent of ad- 
mitting interference in the purely domestic affairs 
of a state. But it must be accepted to a degree 
that will allow of bringing to bear upon the im- 
portant relations of states to one another, — that 



184 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

is, upon strictly international questions, — the col- 
lective judgment of at least a group of states hav- 
ing an interest in those questions. 

Here, undoubtedly, have to be made two dis- 
criminations: (1) between questions which are 
strictly internal to the separate states and strictly 
international questions; and (2) between the 
powers capable of uniting together upon terms of 
equality for the consideration of questions purely 
international and those that will not submit to a 
collective decision. 

It may often be difficult to distinguish between 
what is merely domestic and what is properly 
speaking international in the action of sovereign 
powers. The great powers have in the past not 
hesitated to interfere in matters of a wholly do- 
mestic character in the case of the weaker states, 
as, for example, with administrative reforms in 
Turkey, and with customs tariffs in China. 
Such interference is beyond question an infringe- 
ment upon sovereignty. It can be justified only 
when it is intended to suppress a domestic condi- 
tion that unjustly affects the rights of foreign 
powers, such as a state of anarchy, inhuman bar- 
barity, or a persistent form of maladministration. 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 185 

When, on the other hand, it aims at extorting a 
commercial advantage, it has no justification. It 
is natural, therefore, that small and weak states, 
feeling themselves liable to such abuses by 
stronger powers, should dread any form of inter- 
national control that might unjustly infringe upon 
their sovereignty. It would be necessary, there- 
fore, in framing an international constitution in- 
tended as the legal authorization of an interna- 
tional government, to mark out very clearly the 
limits within which it could act, and thus to pro- 
tect the weaker states from the intervention of 
the stronger. 

It is evident, also, that the formation of a gen- 
eral union for purposes of legislation, judicial 
judgment, and executive action would involve 
grave problems. While all independent states, 
regardless of size and power, are in law juristi- 
cally equal, they are not materially equal either 
in a military or an economic sense. If, there- 
fore, representation in international bodies — leg- 
islative, judicial, and executive — were equal, it 
would involve a certain subjection of the great 
powers to the will of the small states to which 
they would not willingly submit. If, on the other 



186 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

hand, representation were proportioned to wealth, 
population, extent of territory, or any other simi- 
lar standard, the smaller states would feel that 
they were in danger of being subordinated by 
their more powerful neighbors. Finally, there 
would be an inherent incompatibility between the 
absolute and the constitutional powers, the for- 
mer being indisposed to bind themselves to the re- 
strictions that would necessarily be placed upon 
them by general principles of law, and the latter 
being uncertain whether or not they could depend 
upon the good faith of powers whose political 
systems were in principle opposed to any external 
restraints — restraints which at a critical moment 
they might in perfect consistency with their abso- 
lute theory of the state suddenly decide to re- 
nounce. 

We are brought, therefore, boldly to dismiss 
the pretension that a general international gov- 
ernment is either possible or desirable. Such an 
organization would of necessity include both great 
and small states, empires and democracies, pow- 
ers with unsatisfied world-wide ambitions and 
petty sovereignties just emerging from semi-bar- 
barism, and among them aspirants to nationality 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 187 

virtually only on the ragged edge of statehood, 
yet claiming the right to possess an equal voice in 
an international body, but in reality the mere 
vassals or protectorates of great powers. 

Would it not, in fact, appear that the most that 
could reasonably be expected in the form of an 
international organization fit to legislate and ex- 
ercise judicial functions would, at least in the 
beginning, be a strong, but limited, group of 
powers, each willing to sacrifice something of its 
own sovereignty for the purpose of insuring peace 
and equity, thus constituting a coherent force, not 
upon the principle of the balance of power, but a 
nucleus for the ultimate union of all responsible 
and socially inclined nations? This, of course, 
would have to be sufficiently powerful to defend 
its members from attack and even able to offer 
protection to the independence of the smaller 
states desirous of entering into its compact. It 
would not necessarily be a federation, which 
would imply the creation of a new state, nor even 
an alliance. It might be in substance merely the 
formal recognition of the existence of a real, as 
distinguished from a purely fictitious, society of 
states based upon common intentions and a dec- 



188 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

laration of definite principles of right which the 
members were willing to accept, to observe, and 
to defend. 

Such a society of states as has just been out- 
lined would, however, itself be a mere fiction of 
the mind unless it possessed some kind of legis- 
lative, judicial, and executive powers. But it is 
quite possible that a society of states should in 
some degree possess such powers without in real- 
ity constituting a new state. The establishment 
of new relations is not equivalent to the creation 
of a new entity, and it is merely the establishment 
of new relations that is here contemplated. 
There would be no new sovereignty developed, 
but merely the concurrent action of preexistent 
sovereignties. For constitutional states there is 
virtually no surrender of sovereign authority in 
submitting to international law, because, being 
themselves constituted for justice as the end of 
their existence, international law contradicts noth- 
ing essential to them. For an absolutist state, 
however, the case is different. Pretending to 
possess unlimited authority and finding the end 
of its existence in augmenting its own power, the 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 189 

absolutist state does not regard itself as under ob- 
ligation to accept any law that is not the declara- 
tion of its own will. 

Here is the explanation of why the Hague con- 
ferences of 1889 and 1907 were nearly fruitless 
as legislative bodies. They were, however, gen- 
erally regarded as law-making assemblies, sub- 
ject, of course, to veto by the refusal of the sepa- 
rate states to ratify their conclusions. In the 
first conference twenty-six states, and in the sec- 
ond conference forty-four — these being all but 
four of the independent states of the entire world 
— united in making conventions intended to have 
a universal and legal character, but these were of 
an extremely limited nature because in both cases 
the range of subjects was restricted by previous 
agreement, entire unanimity was necessary in or- 
der to secure adoption of each separate item by 
the conference, and the conventions that had 
braved and triumphed over all these discourage- 
ments were still null and void for all the powers 
that did not expressly ratify them. It is not sur- 
prising, therefore, that the results were meager. 

While these conferences prove that interna- 
tional legislation is possible by an association of 



190 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

sovereign powers, they also make evident what 
is necessary to render it really fruitful. The 
first necessity is that strict unanimity must be 
given up, and the nations must admit their ob- 
ligation to obey such international rules as re- 
ceive preponderant assent, not perhaps the assent 
of a bare majority, but of a very large plurality. 
This the absolutist governments will not do, for 
they will accept no rule which involves any dis- 
advantage to themselves, no matter how just it 
may be. A constitutional state, on the other 
hand, may accept any just rule without surrender- 
ing any of its sovereign rights, for it claims no 
rights which just legislation would endanger. 

The primary problem therefore is how to or- 
ganize an international conference, assembled to 
perfect international law, in such a manner as to 
prevent unjust or ex parte legislation. The only 
practicable method, perhaps, is, first of all, by 
negotiation between powers disposed to partici- 
pate in such a conference and to be bound by it 
to frame a constitution defining and limiting its 
powers, and, since the procedure must of neces- 
sity be experimental, to provide for its subse- 
quent amendment, except as respects certain defi- 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 191 

nite and essential rights explicitly and per- 
manently reserved to the states taking part in it. 
Such a conference, for reasons already stated, 
would not be universal. At The Hague it was 
esteemed necessary that an international confer- 
ence should be universal, and this was the reason 
for requiring absolute unanimity and for the con- 
sequent dread of isolating one or more of the 
powers, which, therefore, were able to hold up the 
conference on every vital question and thus pre- 
vent the adoption of the measures most necessary 
to the peace and safety of the world. 

While unanimity is most desirable, it is ab- 
surd to insist that some one recalcitrant power, 
even though a great one, may virtually frustrate 
the labors of all the rest. Such a decision not 
only forestalls the possibility of reaching a con- 
clusion upon any really vital matter, but it pre- 
vents even the discussion of the subjects most 
needing to be considered. At the termination of 
the second conference at The Hague, after four 
months of tuition in the gentle art of arriving at 
no conclusion under past-masters in obstructive 
diplomacy, many of the most thoughtful of the 
delegates were of the opinion that another con- 



192 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

ference to be held under the same conditions 
would be a waste of energy. 

What then should be the competency of an in- 
ternational conference? What authority may 
safely and wisely be attributed to it? In other 
words, how far may an independent nation sub- 
mit to the collective decisions of such a body? 

Reserving its political independence and its 
territorial integrity in the mandate constituting 
such a conference, supposing the conference to 
be composed exclusively of constitutional states, 
why should it not submit to any decisions in the 
nature of general laws which after full discussion 
the large majority is willing to accept and agrees 
to observe? 

Here is the crux of the whole matter of in- 
ternational organization. If everything is to re- 
main entirely voluntary, such organization is use- 
less. If, on the contrary, everything is compul- 
sory, that makes an end of state independence 
and transfers sovereignty altogether to a central 
body. 

The key to the problem is to be found in the 
expression "decisions in the nature of general 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 193 

laws." There is no reason why such decisions, 
made under constitutional limitations, should not 
be freely accepted as binding. It is the only way 
in which the rules of international law can be 
brought to any high degree of perfection; and it 
is the perfection of these rules— that is, their ap- 
proximation to principles of justice — that alone 
can furnish a basis for the normal life of a so- 
ciety of states. 

Given an acceptable body of law, the necessary 
machinery of international government is re- 
duced to extreme simplicity. Next comes the 
need of judicial decision. The reluctance of con- 
stitutional governments to submit their disputes 
to arbitration does not proceed from a desire to 
act unjustly. It arises rather from the conviction 
that in the absence of fixed standards of judg- 
ment decisions will be reached which are purely 
arbitrary — mere attempts to settle the dispute by 
makeshift compromises that do not embody jus- 
tice to any one. Where the law is clear, there is 
little difficulty in inducing responsible govern- 
ments to submit to an international tribunal dis- 
putes which, to use the technical word, are " jus- 
ticiable," that is, which are of a legal character. 



194 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

But it is obvious that the reason why so many 
international questions are not of a legal char- 
acter is simply because the law is so incomplete, 
so imperfect, or customs are so contradictory, 
that there is no legal basis of settlement, since 
there is virtually no clear law upon the subject. 

The remedy here is quite simple. It consists 
in perfecting the law; and the law can be per- 
fected only by discussion and decision in an in- 
ternational conference, the members of which are 
willing to accept one another's bona fides, and 
respect the clear, deliberate, and preponderant col- 
lective judgment of the delegates. 

It is true that difficulties have been raised re- 
garding the formation of an international ju- 
diciary, but the chief of these has grown out of 
the idea that such a tribunal must have a uni- 
versal character; that is, that every state must 
have a representative on the international bench. 
A court composed of forty-four judges would be 
in every way impracticable. But it is altogether 
unnecessary. The assumption that every state 
must be represented on the bench is based upon 
the idea that every state must sit in its own case, 
which is absurd. This idea grows wholly out 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 195 

of the vagueness and imperfection of the law, 
which involves the reference of a dispute to the 
private judgment of a jurist who may be in- 
fluenced by his national prejudices in making his 
decision. But when the law is clear and com- 
plete, the decision is greatly simplified. It then 
becomes merely an ascertainment of facts which 
must rest on sufficient evidence, and an applica- 
tion of the law to the circumstances of the case. 
National prejudice, under these conditions, is 
virtually excluded; and where the law is per- 
fectly clear the requirements of a good interna- 
tional judge are simply common honesty and 
clear intelligence, which happily are not national 
monopolies and are not impossible to find. 

As to the form or constitution of the court, that 
is a matter of much less consequence than is 
ordinarily supposed. The important thing is 
that there should be some competent court avail- 
able; for ordinary cases, perhaps, a small per- 
manent tribunal of expert jurists always open 
to hearings, and for special and delicate con- 
troversies specifically chosen judges selected ad 
hoc by the contestants. 

When we come to the enforcement of judicial 



196 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

decisions, other difficulties present themselves, but 
most of them are imaginary, at least as far as 
constitutional states are concerned, for these are 
habituated to accepting without hesitation the 
decisions of properly constituted courts. As for 
absolutist governments, — governments based on 
force and not on law, — they are by definition left 
out of the society of states as here conceived. 
There would be the same danger in including 
them in it that there would be in inviting a band 
of highway robbers to form part of a protec- 
tive constabulary to secure the safety of prop- 
erty. 

The natural consequence of refusing to respect 
the decision of an accepted international judicial 
tribunal would be, that a state thus refusing 
would henceforth be considered an international 
outlaw, and might properly be treated as such. 

How far military power should be employed 
in the enforcement of international obligations is 
a matter for grave consideration. The use of 
military force means war, and the question there- 
fore becomes, For what purposes should nations 
be prepared to go to war? Certainly not for any 
objects that can be peaceably obtained without 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 197 

the sacrifice of essential rights. Certainly not for 
any such abstract idea as peace, apart from any 
known or concrete circumstances. No wise na- 
tion, therefore, will enter into any general com- 
pact to "enforce peace," which in view of actual 
facts might bind it to the most odious obligations 
against its own judgment and conscience. Such 
an agreement would, moreover, bind itself and 
its cosignatories by a solemn compact to preserve 
the status quo, for a time at least, in every unjust 
situation. Nor is there less danger in the en- 
forcement of delay, which might produce worse 
consequences than prompt action. But there 
might, with very good reason, be an international 
declaration of what should constitute just and 
unjust causes of war, which would serve as a 
warning to unjust aggressors as to where the sym- 
pathies of neutrals would be placed in case the 
rules were violated. It is inconceivable that 
prudent statesmen will ever unite in an engage- 
ment to go to war under circumstances wholly 
unknown to them, and not affecting the direct in- 
terests of the powers they represent or their specific 
obligations toward their neighbors or allies. In- 
ternational morality will find its best field of de- 



198 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

velopment in conditions that leave the nations free 
to exercise in such matters their reason and their 
consciences in the light of the actual conditions 
by which they may be surrounded. 

There remain, of course, many international 
questions that cannot be reduced to formulae of 
international law, or submitted to the decision of 
judicial tribunals. These are the questions of 
national policy which every nation must reserve 
for its own determination. What means each na- 
tion shall take for its own defense, whether on 
land or sea, must be left to its own decision, as 
well as where to find its friends and whom to 
consider as its enemies. 

But this reserve of national independence by 
no means excludes international relations outside 
of those which relate to the determination and en- 
forcement of international law. There is a wide 
field for friendly social intercourse, for mutual 
counsel, for an exchange of views, and for the 
exercise of those influences which promote con- 
fidence and consolidate friendship. This is the 
work of diplomacy which will find its task greatly 
lightened, but not in any sense superseded, by 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 199 

the perfection of international law, and the re- 
sort to international tribunals. 

Diplomacy, rightly considered, is a creative 
function. It clears the way for better under- 
standings and closer relationships. The nations 
are constantly making a new world. New needs 
and new inventions are incessantly preparing the 
way for new international contacts. There is 
no longer a possibility of isolation. There can 
be in modern times no hermit nation. Trade is 
breaking down the old barriers, and the multipli- 
cation of new desires, even among semi-barbar- 
ous peoples, is opening new ports and develop- 
ing new markets. 

The whole world is now compelled to think and 
to act internationally. The public is hardly 
aware of what was accomplished in the last cen- 
tury in the way of organizing specific interna- 
tional relationships by the creation of such or- 
ganisms as the Universal Postal Union, the Tele- 
graphic Union, the Radio-Telegraphic Union, the 
Metric Union, the Geodetic Association, and half 
a dozen other permanent quasi-legislative or ad- 
ministrative associations of an international char- 
acter. There are, besides, many periodic con- 



200 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

ferences relating to industrial property, literary 
and artistic property, railway and oceanic trans- 
portation, safety at sea, sanitation, the use and 
sale of drugs and intoxicants, commercial statis- 
tics, monetary affairs, and other matters of gen- 
eral human interest. To these must be added 
the permanent commissions such as the Bureau of 
The Hague Tribunal, the Sugar Commission, the 
Opium Commission, the Committee on the Map 
of the World, the Bureau for the Publication of 
Customs Tariffs, etc. Some of these are the re- 
sult of official action through diplomatic inter- 
course, others of private initiative; but all com- 
bine to unify the nations, and to accustom them 
to cooperation and submission to collective de- 
cisions. 

The success of these efforts suggests the util- 
ity of still wider joint action in the treatment of 
those residuary problems which cannot be solved 
by legal processes because they are matters not of 
strict legality, but of national policy. 

I refer now to those great international ques- 
tions of an economic nature which create the con- 
ditions for economic imperialism, and which, 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 201 

more than any other definable causes, endanger 
the peace of the world. The seed-plot of future 
wars is to be found in the undeveloped countries. 
Unable to protect themselves, they are forced to 
rely upon the protection of stronger countries, and 
they often become the victims of their designs. 
China, Persia, Morocco, Turkey, the Balkan 
States, South Africa, these have been the great 
centers of international disturbance. It is not 
merely that they are markets for manufactured 
goods. That rivalry of mere salesmen might 
be comparatively innocuous. Economic imperi- 
alism has its roots in the exportation of capital 
seeking permanent investment in backward coun- 
tries, in concessions, in the political influence that 
extorts them, and mainly in the foreign govern- 
mental power that backs up and supports the 
extortions. Finally, the rivalry for monopoly 
between the subjects or citizens of different gov- 
ernments leads to friction. Intrigues follow, 
contracts are opposed or broken, acquired rights 
are insisted upon, and powerful financial influ- 
ences are brought to bear for the employment of 
armies and navies to enforce them. Dynastic 



202 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

imperialism masks its political designs under this 
defense of alleged national rights and interests, 
and embraces the opportunity to make a popular 
war; whereas, without such an excuse, there 
would be opposition to a military adventure. 

It cannot be held that the development of the 
backward countries is undesirable, or that the 
protection of its own nationals by a government 
is not a duty. On the contrary, it is only by 
foreign capital that the resources of these 
neglected territories can be utilized for the benefit 
of mankind; and every citizen has a rightful 
claim upon his government to protect him from 
injustice even in a foreign land. The extension 
of civilization over the earth demands both the 
enterprise of the pioneer and the assertion of civil 
authority. The crime of governments is that for 
political advantage they make business a partner 
in schemes of military exploitation ; and the folly 
of the business world is that it invites the power 
of the sword to tip the balance of business compe- 
tition, thereby involving itself in military costs 
that heavily handicap all industrial and commer- 
cial activities in time of peace, and sweep them to 
the brink of ruin in time of war. 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 203 

From these undeniable facts two fallacious con- 
clusions are sometimes drawn : ( 1 ) that foreign in- 
vestors and diplomatists are conspirators against 
peace; and (2) that those who extend their enter- 
prises to foreign lands deserve for their cupidity 
to suffer loss if they meet with misfortune. 

Neither of these conclusions is founded in fact 
or is worthy of acceptance. If all nations should 
accept them, there would be an end to all foreign 
trade. It is true that foreign investors seek gov- 
ernmental protection, and that wise governments 
protect foreign investors; but in neither case is 
there good ground for accusation of wrong-doing. 
The evil is that, instead of promoting the conduct 
of international business upon proper business 
lines, by international agreement and coopera- 
tion, governments, without effectual efforts to 
avoid the use of military force, employ it as an 
instrument of national commercial success and 
territorial expansion; that is, to secure and hold 
points of permanent advantage, through political 
control of distant and strategical parts of the 
earth, for the extension of empire. Exploita- 
tion, monopoly, colonization, and conquest are 
the successive steps in this procedure. 



204 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

To such processes, sustained by military force, 
international law and courts of arbitration pre- 
sent but feeble barriers. So long as these con- 
tinue to be national policies, there will be much 
that cannot be brought within the scope of in- 
ternational legislation. But is it not evident that 
these business interests are proper subjects for 
negotiation and conciliation? The moment the 
problem of trade is envisaged as a purely business 
proposition apart from dynastic considerations, 
it is clear that military methods of extending 
civilization are not in the true interest of the 
people of any country, and not even to the high- 
est advantage of the persons who for commercial 
reasons encourage them. 

It is time, therefore, for business men — the 
great manufacturers, bankers, ship-owners, and 
traders — to say to their governments: "We do 
not ask you to promote our interests by armies 
and navies; we wish you to give us an oppor- 
tunity to organize the business of the world on 
business lines. While your diplomatists and jur- 
ists meet at The Hague to settle questions of 
rights, bring us together with your sanction in a 
world congress with representatives of other na- 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 205 

tions to consider our mutual interests. We shall 
speak of coal, of iron, of shipping, of the gold 
supply, and of their distribution; and we shall 
be able to show that if the governments will keep 
their hands off and leave our business to us, the 
whole world shall be well fed and well warmed 
and well clothed; and, at the same time we shall 
all, yes all, obtain a greater share of wealth than 
we now have or can ever hope to have under the 
military system. And when we have ourselves, 
as business men, worked out our plans and our 
compromises, then we shall ask you to unite, as 
governments, to see that the seas are free from 
piracy and menace to life and property, and that 
we may have the combined force of civilized gov- 
ernments behind us to protect us from robbery 
and abuse by any one of them." 

In brief, an international board of trade con- 
ciliation, composed of representative business 
men, supplemented by frequent general confer- 
ences, with no force behind them but the evi- 
dence of facts and the power of persuasion, if 
held to complete publicity, could accomplish more 
in five years to insure the peace and prosperity of 
the world than any secret negotiations by dip- 



206 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

lomatists backed by all the armies in existence. 
If the business of the world were once frankly 
established upon a world basis, community of in- 
terest would go far to discourage war, for modern 
wars originate chiefly from economic inequalities 
and ambitions ; and the agents of economic power, 
if they were not in alliance with military force 
exercised in the interest of dynastic purposes, 
could more easily satisfy them by purely economic 
means. 

There remain the questions of free waterways 
— the paths of world intercourse — from which 
some nations are excluded, the "open door" in 
the countries of still unappropriated markets, and 
the tariff walls. These also are business ques- 
tions and fit problems for business men, which 
the sword can never rightly settle. So far, they 
also have been regarded as purely political ques- 
tions, and have been treated as such. But all 
matters of policy are primarily questions of profit 
or expediency and not of right and wrong, al- 
though they may involve them. The difference is 
important, for right and wrong cannot be com- 
promised, while expediency and profit are always 
affairs of transaction. There is, therefore, noth- 



INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 207 

ing hopeless in such problems, which are matters 
to argue about, but not to fight about. 

Being an economic as well as a jural problem, 
international organization must be worked out by 
a combination of governmental and business 
agencies. Neither can be entrusted with the en- 
tire task. The material needs of mankind can- 
not be regulated by rigid legal formulae, which 
would impose a despotism too depressing to be 
endured. On the other hand, purely business 
motives which, if given a free hand, might pro- 
duce intolerable commercial trusts, in the end 
more powerful than governments, are in need of 
legal control. It is by the intelligent cooperation 
of these two agencies, the legal and the economic, 
for the welfare of mankind, that international or- 
ganization will attain its normal ends. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CONSTRUCTIVE POWER OF 
DEMOCRACY 

IN view of its bearing upon the problem of inter- 
national organization, one of the fundamental 
questions in the great conflict that began in 
Europe in 1914 and has now extended to the whole 
world appears to be whether autocracy or democ- 
racy is finally to prevail. At first apparently a 
mere struggle for tribal predominance, the war 
has become a battle of institutions and legal sys- 
tems. Is the world to be ruled by force or by 
law? And if by law, who is to say what the law 
shall be? 

No thoughtful man can any longer doubt that 
imperialism has destroyed Europe and can never 
reconstruct it. The reason is evident. Imperial- 
ism means the forcible domination of one nation 
over others. Imperial policies not only conflict, 

they are intrinsically incapable of reconciliation. 

208 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 209 

An appeal, therefore, is now made to democracy 
to bring peace and order and mutual confidence 
out of the chaos that autocratic rule has produced. 
All the aspirations for the creation of a truly 
human world— a world in which general prin- 
ciples of justice shall prevail— seem to gather 
around this word as if it were the only remaining 
hope of humanity. Never before has the need of 
a great constructive principle in international 
affairs been so apparent. Never before has the 
opportunity for its employment been so auspi- 
cious. Never before has mankind, as if inspired 
by a common impulse, so completely broken away 
from autocratic traditions. To-day it is a fact 
that four-fifths of the habitable surface of the 
earth is dedicated to the aspirations of democracy; 
and included in this area is at least three-fourths 
of the human race. China, with her four hun- 
dred million human beings, and Russia, with 
nearly two hundred millions, have thrown off the 
yoke of absolutism, and joined the great republics 
of the West in the stupendous task of national 
self-government. 

They, too, are in this war for democracy. 
What does it mean to them, this old Greek word 



210 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

which has had such a short history and yet con- 
tains such vast implications? What is the phi- 
losophy that lies behind it or within it? What 
new direction does it point out? What new en- 
ergies does it release? What new ideals does it 
set up? What new achievements does it imply? 
Shall they be the better or the worse for the work- 
ing of this new leaven that seems about to change 
the destiny of nations ? 

If democracy were merely a repudiation of au- 
tocracy, a mere escape from authority, a mere 
drift into vacuity, it would undoubtedly be a dan- 
gerous experiment for any nation to embark upon. 
It does, indeed, begin with a demand for liberty, 
but this is by no means a negative conception. It 
is rather a constructive force. Liberty is the re- 
moval of hindrances to the largest, fullest, most 
fruitful human activities. But it is not an end, 
it is only a condition. And what demands this 
condition is the whole volume of human longing 
and striving, the reaching out for self-realization 
in thought and action. It is, in brief, humanity 
pressing onward to its goal. 

It is this vast inward urgency that gives sig- 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 211 

nificance to democracy. It is imperative, it is 
irresistible. By suppressing the individual per- 
son, this aspiration may for a time seem to be 
destroyed ; but at some unexpected moment it will 
break out anew and sweep everything before it. 
It is essentially a mass movement. Isolated, the 
individual person is timid, circumspect, even ob- 
sequious. United, the people are bold, manda- 
tory, overwhelming. "The will of the people" — 
how the demagogue loves to appeal to it, to invoke 
it, to inspire it, to utilize it, to appropriate it to 
the accomplishment of his purposes! And how 
readily it responds to any ardent touch that evokes 
its expression! The sense of restraint removed, 
the prospect of desires gratified, the impulse of 
new-found power — what an exaltation, what an 
intoxication they produce ! 

But if this were all, if the change from an auto- 
cratic to a democratic regime resulted in nothing 
but this elation of spirit, we might be able to ex- 
plain the origin of revolutions, but we could not 
justify them to our intelligence. When it comes 
to a question of political philosophy and we are 
asked to establish the substantial excellence of 
democracy, we enter an arena of debate in which 



212 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

there is a wide field for discussion. Granting the 
existence of a high degree of intelligence, there 
is no security in that alone. Man is a being of 
mixed desires; some of them are good and some 
of them are bad. Into what is called "the will of 
the people" all of these enter as constituent mo- 
tives or impulses. What is to certify that this 
will shall be always a good will? How shall we 
know that sometimes it may not be base and sel- 
fish ? How shall we be sure that the evil may not 
predominate over the good, the many over the 
few, the vicious over the virtuous, the idle and 
the empty-handed over the industrious and the 
prudent, What security, it may be asked, has 
any principle of right, where the arbitrary will of 
an unrestricted majority prevails? Who can be 
held responsible for its action? What can re- 
strain it from misconduct? Why do we put up 
the sign, "Beware of pickpockets" in great assem- 
blies, and increase the police force the larger the 
crowd becomes ? If as a totality it is honest, why 
does the mass of men need to be so carefully 
guarded against itself? If life and property are 
safer under the protection of a paid agent than 
when they are entrusted to the spontaneous im- 






POWER OF DEMOCRACY 213 

pulses of a multitude, is it not wiser, it will be 
demanded, to concentrate unlimited power in the 
hands of a capable ruler, set apart for the pur- 
pose and placed beyond the influence of ordinary 
motives ? 

This is, in fact, the thesis of those who 
defend the idea of monarchy as a form of govern- 
ment. Assuming that a personal sovereign can 
be placed and kept beyond the influence of ordi- 
nary human motives, the theory has distinct ad- 
vantages. Objection to it cannot well be urged 
on the ground that it involves a concentration of 
power, for this is sometimes necessary to effi- 
ciency; and, in great emergencies, like those 
created by the present war, it is resorted to by 
democracies, also, as the only means of their 
preservation. What renders monarchy indefen- 
sible in the eyes of democracy is that it recognizes 
as supreme a power that is above the law, and 
that claims to be an arbitrary source of law. The 
protest of democracy against autocracy is not 
based on the fact that definite and necessary au- 
thority is confided to one man. It is that autoc- 
racy consists in the exercise of a power that is not 
only not under the restraint of law, but claims 



214 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

authority to ignore all law — a power that deter- 
mines the destinies of men and of whole nations 
without regard to any principles of right, treating 
them as mere passive instruments of its own aims 
and purposes, or of aims and purposes inspired 
by those who can influence the sovereign for their 
own private and exclusive benefit. 

When we go to the bottom of the indictment 
against autocracy, it is not at all that one man 
represents the will of a whole nation, but that an 
arbitrary and lawless will is in command of 
dangerous forces, and insists on doing what a 
just rule of action would forbid. Every type of 
human government must of necessity admit of the 
delegation of powers, and it is a matter of no con- 
cern to one nation to whom another nation dele- 
gates those powers. The whole issue centers 
around the question, What is the source and 
measure of rightful authority? 

What democracy asserts and autocracy denies 
is that all rightful authority in human govern- 
ments is derived from the nature of the human 
beings who are to be governed. When, there- 
fore, Autocracy declares, "I create the law because 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 215 

I am strong," Democracy replies, "It is justice, 
not strength, that should create the law." 

What then is the origin of law? Historically 
rules of action have been laid down by those who 
have had the power to enforce them. Before such 
rules were consciously and specifically formulated, 
law consisted in the customs of the groups or 
societies in which they had come to be adopted as 
the usual modes of action. In the societies where 
conquest or other forms of ascendancy had pro- 
duced a personal ruler, they were the edicts or 
decrees of the ruler and his counselors. These 
forms of obedience were imposed upon subject 
peoples and accompanied with the prospect of 
penalties to be inflicted if they were not regarded. 
To the historical school of legal philosophy, there- 
fore, law is simply the sum of those rules of action 
which have an outward sanction. It is an ex- 
pression of sovereign will. It is a trophy of 
power. Whoever can enforce his will can make 
the law. With morality and abstract right it has 
nothing whatever to do. If it is just, it is not 
because law is essentially just, but because it has 
happened to be prescribed in a spirit of justice. 



216 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

It is, in fact, often unjust; but, just or unjust, it 
is expedient to obey it, for, like the laws of the 
natural world, it is a part of the environment in 
which we live, and the consequences of obedience 
and disobedience are reasonably sure to follow. 

From this theory of the nature of law is derived 
an equally arbitrary theory of the nature of the 
state. Etymologically, it is the status, the condi- 
tion which the sovereign has imposed. The phi- 
losophers of course could not neglect so interesting 
a subject of speculation, and some of them have 
represented it as a kind of self-subsisting entity, 
an emanation of a metaphysical absolute, an in- 
carnation of divinity, and even as a huge levia- 
than, a natural organism of which the monarch 
is the head, and of which the ordinary person is 
only a subordinate molecule. Autocracy has 
eagerly appropriated these conceptions as furnish- 
ing a convenient vehicle for imposing its preten- 
sions by making itself seem to be a part of the 
order of nature. Wishing to screen itself from 
the exactions of morality as well as from the judg- 
ments of the intellect, it has enveloped itself in 
the impenetrable mysteries of religion, thus ren- 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 217 

dering itself unapproachable by the common man, 
and wholly inscrutable to the ordinary mind. 

Democracy has irreverently swept aside this 
veil of metaphysical mysticism. For it law is to 
be discovered in the nature of man as a personal 
and social being. It is something other than the 
sum of sovereign decrees. It is a revelation of 
mutual obligations. Like the truths of nature 
it is an object of unending research. Its basic 
principles like geometric axioms are intuitions 
of universal reason. It springs from inherent 
personal rights, and issues in social duties. It is 
preeminently a principle of intelligence. It finds 
its standards in universal rational conceptions like 
those of justice and equity. It has never yet at- 
tained perfect expression, but it is an ever-present 
mandate of nature, which, like a flowing stream, 
rushes on amid new and changing scenes, as vari- 
able in its content as the growing needs of men, 
but as firm in the indications of its direction as the 
granite walls that bound the course of a mighty 
river on its journey to the sea. 

It is this idea of law as a persistent human ideal 
that has determined democracy's conception of the 
state, which is not a self-subsisting entity, and 



218 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

not like society a purely natural product, but a 
creation of the mind and purpose of man. It 
belongs to the category of legal relations rather 
than to that of material substance. Its only sub- 
stantial components are the wills of human per- 
sons. If there were no people, there would be no 
state. 

Historically, it is true, the state has consisted 
chiefly in a relation of subordination between the 
persons ruled and the persons who ruled them. 
It was a status produced by the domination of the 
weak by the strong. It is historically correct, 
therefore, to speak of the state as "a creation of 
force," and of sovereignty, which is its essence, 
as "supreme power." This is the state as autoc- 
racy would maintain it, the creation of arbitrary 
power beyond the jurisdiction of any binding law, 
and without any form of responsibility. 

For democracy the state has an entirely differ- 
ent meaning. It is a status produced not by force, 
but by voluntary consent. It is the expression of 
what is most vital and essential in the nature of 
man as a moral and social being. As law is de- 
rived from principles inherent in rational intelli- 
gence, the state is an embodiment of law in per- 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 219 

manent institutions. Both the law and the state 
rest on the axiom of inherent personal rights to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Autocracy speaks as if life itself belonged to 
the individual person only through an act of 
grace. In fact it proclaims openly that the state 
is the sole creator of rights, and what it has cre- 
ated it may also take away. Democracy reverses 
these relations, and declares that government is 
created by the consent of the governed. Priority 
therefore belongs to the individual person, be- 
cause society is wholly composed of individual 
persons, in whom alone is to be found either a 
basis or a consciousness of rights. Not, indeed, 
persons in isolation or as abstract entities, for 
men have never existed in separation from society 
into which all are born and of which all form a 
part. It is from the nature of human beings ex- 
isting in communities that democracy derives its 
theory of rights, but it is not from the fact of 
"social solidarity" that it can be deduced. That 
fact alone contains no implication of rightful 
authority, or of any moral qualities whatever. 
Each person in a community might still be a 
member of it without observing any rule but his 



220 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

own interest if that were the general disposition. 
A distinction between right and wrong could 
never be deduced from such a community. Such 
a distinction exists only for the individual mind 
and conscience and can be predicated only of 
individual minds and consciences capable of 
knowing their own rights and the duties correla- 
tive to such rights. 

If the state cannot be founded on the mere fact 
of social solidarity, it is even less possible to base 
it upon the fiction of a self-subsistent "social con- 
sciousness," for such a consciousness does not 
exist. There is in a community a general con- 
sensus of ideas and sentiments, but it inheres in 
the minds of its individual members only. To 
them it has the quality of a law for conduct, and 
the expression of it becomes the solid foundation 
of the state. Its value is to be found in the fact 
that it is recognized to be an embodiment of jus- 
tice, and may therefore be generally accepted 
without resort to violence. Being the composite 
formula of their united conceptions of their rights, 
obedience to it may be secured with a minimum 
of penalty. 

But if it is true that a just government is a 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 221 

creation of the governed, the question is pressed 
upon us, How far may some individual persons 
rightly enforce their own private wills upon other 
individual persons? If there is any rightful 
authority in government, it must be derived from 
beings who believe themselves to possess inherent 
rights because they distinguish between right and 
wrong in conduct. What inherent rights then do 
some possess which do not belong to all? And 
what principle can be adopted as a standard of 
judgment unless it is universal ? 

We perceive, therefore, that, while autocracy 
has no solid moral foundation, the triumph of de- 
mocracy involves a principle of self-abnegation 
which not all the advocates of its desirability are 
willing to accept. The people cannot logically 
take over and exercise the absolute and unlimited 
authority which they have repudiated. We are 
compelled to recognize the fact that when it comes 
to imposing an absolute will upon a person to an 
extent that robs him of an inherent right like 
that to life, liberty, or property, it makes no prac- 
tical difference whether that deprivation is ef- 
fected by one or a few or a majority of his fellow- 



222 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

beings, since in all these cases he is equally di- 
vested of his right. When the state does this, no 
matter what the form of government may be, it 
becomes despotic, and its tyranny is as odious 
under one disguise as under another. 

It is necessary, therefore, for democracy to plant 
itself firmly and unalterably upon the rights of 
the individual person and the doctrine that gov- 
ernment exists to secure these rights. Unless it 
stands upon this foundation, it has no ground of 
protest against autocracy, and it has no means of 
self-justification. A society may transform itself 
into a predatory band, but, however numerous or 
powerful it may be, it is impossible to identify 
such a band with the democratic conception of the 
state. A true democracy can neither oppress the 
poor nor rob the rich, for it is based on equal laws 
for all. If it were not loyal to the right of every 
man, no matter how humble or how fortunate, it 
would repudiate its own basis of authority. It 
might, when supported by great majorities, be 
very formidable, even irresistible, but, although 
by means of its power it could enforce obedience, 
it could not command our respect or inspire our 
loyalty. 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 223 

The right of a government to claim legitimacy 
and to demand that its authority be respected is 
in no sense founded upon its power, but upon its 
purpose, and that purpose must be the protection 
of all human rights. Everything else is pure as- 
sumption. And there are in the world no rights 
that are not in some sense inherent in persons, or 
in some manner derived from them. Eliminate 
the human being from your order of ideas, and 
you have not only rendered rightful authority an 
illusion, you have also destroyed altogether the 
sole foundation for the conception of right, and 
reduced the whole fabric of society to a complex 
of purely mechanical relations. 

If this be true, there is no human being, no mat- 
ter how poor or feeble or helpless, who does not, 
by virtue of the nature and dignity of personality 
possess inherent rights and claims to just consider- 
ation which the most overwhelming majorities 
cannot take away without the logical destruction 
of their own right to formulate the law; for the 
right to make law has no other solid foundation 
than this, that it consists simply and solely in the 
right to protect personal rights by placing the 
whole force of the community behind them. 



224 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

This is the creed of democracy. Against it 
autocracy opposes the traditions of power, the 
sophisms of sovereignty, the keen edge of the 
drawn sword. Above all human rights it places 
the interests of the state as supreme power, with 
its pretended right of conquest and subjugation, 
derived from some mysterious mandate of deity 
in whose name it claims the exclusive right to 
speak. It boasts of the gleam of its shining 
armor. It hides its schemes of dishonor behind 
the mask of virtue. It promises glory and plun- 
der. It tramples the breasts of women under the 
feet of its horses. It rains fire from the clouds, 
desolates fair landscapes, mutilates temples, car- 
ries whole populations into slavery, and adds to 
the natural terrors of the sea the diabolical con- 
trivances of human ingenuity dedicated to the task 
of wholesale destruction. 

While humanity shudders, democracy goes 
forth to the rescue. It is the battle of St. George 
and the dragon multiplied by all the powers of 
strong nations. But it is not a contest of ma- 
terial forces only. It is a struggle of principles. 
How can Europe be reconstituted? How can 
civilization be restored? How can the world 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 225 

resume its task of culture and social develop- 
ment? 

Autocracy has no answer. Triumphant, it 
would cause all nations to pass under its yoke and 
yield to its exactions. Only half defeated, even 
in its death-throes it would invoke new wars, 
dream of more cruel barbarities, plan still wider 
devastations. Let the battle, then, be fought out 
now. But first it must be won in the thoughts 
of men. Who is it who speaks for humanity? 
Is it autocracy or is it democracy? What can 
end triumphant tribalism? What can establish 
universal humanism ? It is man and not the state 
that can give the answer. 

But the state must continue to exist. The na- 
tions are persistent realities. They may be deci- 
mated in numbers and impoverished in their pos- 
sessions, but they cannot be destroyed. Ruined 
in fortune, broken and mutilated in person, men 
may enclose themselves in trenches and fortifica- 
tions with death in perpetual command of their 
frontiers, but they will still cling to their national- 
ity; in their desperate extremity they will learn 
more and more to love it, and as long as a shred of 



226 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

the riddled and blood-stained banner of their 
country flutters above the field of carnage, they 
will still feel that they belong to a nation. 

What, then, is a nation, but a group of men 
with common traditions, common memories, com- 
mon interests, and common aims? But there is 
also the larger community. The traditions, the 
memories, the interests, and the aims may be very 
different, but beneath them all and over them all 
is the community of rights. These are not tribal. 
They are not national. They are human and 
universal. 

Between democracy and the fiction of unlimited 
sovereignty there can be no logical alliance. If 
the postulates of democracy are true, then the pre- 
tension to unlimited sovereignty is false. A state 
has no rights that are not derived from the rights 
of the persons who compose it. The government 
they create has no other source of authority. But 
even the sum of all such rights does not create an 
unlimited sovereignty. By virtue of their origin, 
the just powers of the state are limited both as 
respects its citizens, and as regards all other 
states; for the inherent rights of its components, 
on which the whole structure of its authority 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 227 

rests, may not justly be taken away and other 
states, like itself, represent with equal clearness 
the rights of other nations which therefore cannot 
justly be denied. 

Thus understood, the value of democracy as a 
basis for international law is apparent. As the 
just powers of separate states are derived from 
the personal rights of their constituents, so the 
idea of international rights arises from the rela- 
tions of independent states. They, too, thus be- 
come endowed with rights of existence, of inde- 
pendence, of just treatment, of self-defense; but 
the attribute of an unlimited sovereignty is not 
among them. It cannot be deduced from any 
source whatever except physical power, and mere 
physical power, apart from principles of justice, 
is not legal authority in any sense which scientific 
jurisprudence can maintain. 

Autocracy, based on no distinction of right and 
wrong, asserts the absolute subjection of some 
persons to the will and dictation of other persons, 
and without inconsistency affirms also the ab- 
solute subjection of some nations to other nations, 
the test of superiority being merely their relative 
strength. He who has the power to do so has the 



228 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

right to rule; and the only limit to this right, 
according to autocracy, is in the power to resist it. 

What this signifies for democracy is evident. 
It means that however unwilling to do so, peace- 
able nations must arm themselves and prepare all 
the vast and complicated enginery of war on land 
and sea in order to preserve their existence. It 
means that as long as autocracy has plans of con- 
quest democracy is in danger. In vain it elab- 
orates constitutions for the guarantee of individual 
rights. In vain it convokes international confer- 
ences. In vain it signs treaties and conventions. 
At some unexpected moment, perhaps in the midst 
of delicate negotiations, it suddenly hears the 
tramp of invading armies, it sees the sky dark- 
ened with innumerable air craft, while demons 
of the deep strew the seas with shattered ships and 
mutilated corpses. 

What is the object of these terrors? It is that 
the authors of them may impose their will upon 
others. The truth is that imperialism is not so 
much a form of government as a system of forci- 
ble exploitation. No modern nation supports 
autocratic rule merely out of deference to a 
dynasty. The dogma of divine right is held 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 229 

chiefly by the rulers who are its beneficiaries ; but 
whole peoples, consciously or unconsciously, are 
their business partners in predatory exploits. 
The motive of these nations is national enrich- 
ment. Trade, colonies, mineral resources, to be 
exploited in the interest of the commercial class — 
these are the real pillars of autocracy, resting 
upon the interests of a military caste — the brood 
of younger sons, too proud to work, who must be 
provided with a gentleman's career. Autocracy 
flourishes nowhere without the stimulus of pros- 
pective war, and it is in modern times a people's 
war, of which Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs are 
the unhappy instruments quite as much as they 
are the personal authors. Imperialism has be- 
come a national predatory enterprise far more 
than it is a political conviction, and the evidence 
of this is so overwhelming that it cannot be de- 
nied. The imperialistic organizations in Ger- 
many that urged on the war under the preposter- 
ous representation that the empire was attacked 
are now declaring that there can be "no peace 
without indemnities for the enormous sacrifices 
Germany has made, and to develop her economic, 
cultural, and social life." "Germany," it is de- 



230 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

clared, "must secure better protection for its 
frontiers, land for settlement and food produc- 
tion, the strengthening of its naval position, and 
the improved condition of its industries by greater 
supplies of raw materials. " Failing these, it has 
been openly announced in the Reichstag that Ger- 
many must be indemnified for her sacrifices by the 
people of the United States of America. 

With the political preferences of a nation, other 
nations have no right to interfere; but when im- 
perial exploitation is convicted by its own words 
of predatory designs, when it wantonly destroys 
the independence of small states, expropriates 
their resources and carries into captivity their van- 
quished populations, interference becomes an in- 
ternational duty. 

In a war alleged to be one of defense, the armies 
of the German Empire are encamped on the terri- 
tory of twelve independent nations, nine of which 
are the victims of its depredations, and three of 
which are its partners in crime. After acts of 
piracy unknown in the history of civilized coun- 
tries, including the wanton murder of innocent 
men, women, and children on the high seas, it 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 231 

has taken complete possession of the Atlantic 
Ocean, so that no ship of any nation is anywhere 
safe from destruction. But even these enormities 
did not set a limit to the arrogance and outlawry 
of the imperial spirit; and as a punishment for 
the resentment felt because of the injuries endured 
the territory of the United States was to be in- 
vaded and dismembered by means of a subsidized 
coalition to be used as an instrument for a blow 
at our national life. 

Not only is autocracy organized for war with a 
design to subsist upon it, but it carries an infec- 
tion that penetrates to the heart of bodies politic 
that shrink from contact with it. Some form and 
degree of it is forced upon any nation which, how- 
ever unwillingly, seriously undertakes to act in 
its own defense. All actual war measures, to 
some extent, denature democracy. Enforced 
military service, exorbitant taxation, the sup- 
pression of a free press, the dictatorial powers of 
the executive, the constraint placed upon legisla- 
tive action in time of war— all these, though un- 
avoidable, are encroachments upon the immuni- 
ties of the individual person, suspend the full en- 



232 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

joyment of his personal freedom, and temporarily 
assimilate even a democratic government to the 
rule of an autocrat. 

In order to preserve their existence democracies 
must submit for a time to this sacrifice, but in do- 
ing so they risk the permanent loss of some of 
their liberties, for in a protracted war these are 
partly forgotten, and if this condition endures, 
they may never be wholly recovered. When a 
government is obliged in self-defense to take over 
all the people's industries, to organize all their 
activities, to regulate all their earnings and ex- 
penditures, democracy can hardly distinguish it- 
self from autocracy except by the purity and ele- 
vation of its purpose in rendering effective its 
means of military defense. The present war has 
demonstrated that this is no unfounded inference. 
"England," wrote a German historian in the first 
year of the war, "if she would play any part what- 
ever in the world's future, must rebuild her po- 
litical structure from the ground up, and adopt a 
state organization such as prevails on the con- 
tinent, and which has found its fullest develop- 
ment, and therefore its highest efficiency, in the 
German State." 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 233 

This prediction has been already in part ful- 
filled, and it has proved that the very existence of 
free governments depends upon the suppression 
of that type of imperialism which menaces the 
independence of all nations. 

There can therefore be no permanent peace 
until autocratic power is ended. It is futile, it is 
grossly inconsistent and reprehensible, for those 
who love peace to demand it until the conditions 
for its permanence can be established. 

Can democracy ever establish it? It must 
either do so or itself be overcome. It alone pos- 
sesses the constructive power to impose peace by 
the extension of the universal principles of justice 
from which it derives its own existence. If it 
should prove false to them, its historic mission 
must end in failure. It has no quarrel with the 
idea of nationality; but the problem of national- 
ity, with its serious geographic complications, can 
never be solved by any mere barter and sale of 
nations or by any process of national vivisection. 
Its only solution is in the souls of the people. 
Render them free to choose, give them their rights 
of unrestrained affiliation, cultural development, 
local legislation, federation according to their 



234 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

native affinities, the assured independence of the 
groups thus formed, and just economic advan- 
tages, and no serious problems of nationality will 
remain. 

But this involves a reconstruction of the idea of 
sovereignty. In its dynastic sense the word must 
be eliminated from the vocabulary of international 
politics. No ruler should be the possessor of 
whole populations merely because he has con- 
quered them. For democracies the word sover- 
eignty in its absolute sense has no meaning. 
What remains of it and all to which constitutional 
states can lay claim is merely the right of a free 
and independent nation to exist, to legislate for 
itself, to defend itself, and to enter into relations 
with other similar states on the basis of juristic 
equality, under principles of international law 
which respect its inherent rights as free constitu- 
tions respect the rights of the individual persons 
who live under them. 

With this high purpose of establishing law and 
liberty, young men and old may well gird them- 
selves for the conflict. Whoever does so may rest 
tranquilly under the gaze of the eternal stars that 
shine in the wide firmament over his bivouac at 



POWER OF DEMOCRACY 235 

midnight, and may firmly face the curtain of fire 
in the deeper night of beclouded battle, for he will 
be in communion with all that is noblest in the 
past and all that is greatest in the future. And 
if he fall in this struggle, he may close his eyes 
with the assurance that his act of sacrifice will 
open to him a deeper sense of communion with the 
Being that has placed in his keeping for immortal 
uses the powers of a mortal life. 



CHAPTER VIII 
AMERICA'S INTEREST IN THE NEW EUROPE 

VITAL as the principles of democracy are be- 
lieved to be to the independence of nations 
and the ultimate peace of the world, the United 
States of America would never have entered the 
Great War for the purpose of imposing a demo- 
cratic form of government upon any people. 
What makes the present struggle in a real sense a 
battle for democracy is the fact that the exposure 
of imperial designs has produced a conviction 
that if these designs should prove successful, de- 
mocracy would ultimately be rendered impossible 
anywhere in the world. Confronted by a trium- 
phant imperialism, self-governing nations would 
be obliged to protect themselves against aggres- 
sion by arming themselves to the full extent of 
their resources, and to resort to a permanent cen- 
tralization of public powers that would divest 
them of their democratic character. Even with 

the utmost precautions the weaker independent 

236 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 237 

states, if left to defend themselves unaided, would 
eventually be compelled to yield to imperial domi- 
nation, thus progressively augmenting the re- 
sources of arbitrary power and proportionally 
weakening the forces of the independent self-gov- 
erning states. If, for example, Central Europe, 
as conceived by Naumann, should be consolidated 
as the result of the Great War, it would be only a 
question of time when not only Belgium, but Hol- 
land, Switzerland, the Scandinavian kingdoms, 
possibly France itself, and certainly the Balkan 
States, would fall under imperial rule. A great 
maritime power, such as would then come into 
existence, with naval stations on all the sea-coasts 
of Europe and acquired colonies, could proceed 
to the conquest of the world. If the Imperial 
German Government can at present interrupt and 
imperil the commerce of the Atlantic and the 
Mediterranean, what might be expected of it when 
it possessed well-furnished naval stations on the 
channel and the Adriatic, not to mention the wider 
possibilities ? 

It was not, however, the fear of German ex- 
pansion in Europe that induced the United States 



238 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

to abandon its policy of neutrality. So long as 
the war was considered as a merely European 
conflict of power, it was to be expected, following 
the American tradition of non-interference in 
European affairs, that the contest would be re- 
garded as foreign to the interests of the American 
people. But in the course of its progress it came 
to be vaguely realized that a struggle so wide- 
spread in extent and so far reaching in its conse- 
quences must profoundly affect the whole world. 
Even a long succession of incredible outrages 
upon the citizens of the United States, accom- 
panied with almost open interference with its in- 
ternal affairs, did not move the American Govern- 
ment to abandon the resolution to remain neutral, 
nor did it awaken the American people to a full 
realization of the peril to which they were ex- 
posed. Hundreds of American men, women, and 
children, innocently traveling upon the high seas 
in the faith that they were under the protection 
of laws and customs which all nations had agreed 
to respect, were mercilessly slaughtered under the 
orders of the Imperial German Government. 
Repeated protests were followed by the continued 
destruction of non-combatant lives and the sink- 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 239 

ing of ships without search or warning, in viola- 
tion not only of established laws of the seas, but 
of the principles embodied in treaties that had 
been solemnly entered into and that the Imperial 
Government insisted were still binding upon the 
United States. 

When the American Government finally an- 
nounced that unless the Imperial Government was 
disposed to conform to the established rules of 
international law, diplomatic relations between 
the two countries must cease altogether, a promise 
to pursue thenceforth a legal course was made, 
but qualified by the demand that the Government 
of the United States should serve the purposes of 
the Imperial Government with other powers 
friendly to the United States. That the restric- 
tion placed upon the devastations of submarine 
torpedo-boats was intended to be only temporary, 
and that these devastations were intended to be 
resumed when a sufficient number of boats should 
be constructed to become really effective in sup- 
pressing American commerce, is now established 
in a manner that exposes the utter insincerity of 
the Imperial Government in all its professedly 
friendly negotiations with the United States. 



240 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

On January 24, 1917, the Imperial German 
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Herr Zimmermann, 
used the following language for publication in 
the United States: 

In the message which President Wilson addressed to the 
Senate (January 22, 1917) the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment recognizes with extreme satisfaction the fact that 
the aspirations and thoughts of the President continue to 
occupy themselves with the question of the restoration of 
permanent peace. The exalted moral earnestness in the 
words of the President insures them an attentive ear 
throughout the world. The Imperial German Government 
earnestly hope that the untiring efforts of the President to 
restore peace on earth may be crowned with success. 

Apparently believing in "the exalted moral 
earnestness" of the President of the United States 
in his "untiring efforts to restore peace on earth," 
Herr Zimmermann, in the midst of these efforts 
for peace, was not only meditating war, but five 
days before using these expressions he had com- 
municated by secret code through the German 
ambassador at Washington the following instruc- 
tion to the German Minister in Mexico: 

Berlin, Jan. 19, 1917. 
On the 1st of February we intend to begin submarine 
warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 241 

to endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America. 
If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance 
on the following basis with Mexico. That we shall make 
war together and together make peace. We shall give 
general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico 
is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, 
and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement. 

You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico 
of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is 
certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the 
United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on 
his own initiative, should communicate with Japan sug- 
gesting adherence at once to this plan. At the same time, 
offer to mediate between Germany and Japan. 

Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico 
that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now 
promises to compel England to make peace in a few 
months. 

ZlMMERMANN. 

One week after expressing his hopes that the 
President's efforts for peace "would be crowned 
with success," on January 31, the Imperial Ger- 
man Government formally announced, as was in- 
tended before and during this whole period, that 
on and after February 1 it would adopt a policy 
of ruthlessness in the use of submarines against 
all shipping seeking to pass through certain desig- 
nated areas of the high seas. 



242 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

This violation of a previous agreement to ob- 
serve the rules of international law, the Imperial 
German Government well knew was equivalent 
to a declaration of war upon the United States, 
made in the midst of "the untiring efforts of the 
President to restore peace on earth." It was the 
German way of expressing "hopes" that these ef- 
forts might "be crowned with success." The 
pledge to observe the law had lasted until hun- 
dreds of submarine-boats were ready to perform 
their task of wrecking the commerce of the world, 
as an essential preliminary to "the restoration of 
peace on earth"! The intention had long been 
kept a secret, which the German proposal of peace 
negotiations had aided in concealing. On Janu- 
ary 19 the Imperial Foreign Office knew that this 
vast flotilla of submarines would be ready by 
February 1, and that its mission would impose 
measures of war upon all neutral nations; yet 
when on February 3 diplomatic relations with the 
Imperial German Government were severed by 
the United States, Berlin naively professed to be 
"astonished" ! 

Not until April 6, however, when overt acts had 
demonstrated the fixed purpose of the Imperial 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 243 

Government to sink American ships, was the 
state of war officially declared to exist. 

It was with truth that the President said to the 
American people, "The wrongs against which we 
are now arraying ourselves are no common 
wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life." 

It is German violence that, notwithstanding our 
peaceable purposes, has made this our war. That 
the United States would ultimately be involved 
in it was inevitable, for it was conceived and pro- 
moted in arrogant contempt of everything for 
which the American people stand sponsors. We 
have accepted the challenge thrown down to us, 
as the President has said, "to vindicate the prin- 
ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world 
as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set 
up among the really free and self-governed peo- 
ples of the world such a concert of purpose and of 
action as will henceforth insure the observance of 
those principles." 

It was at last made evident that geographic iso- 
lation is no longer a sufficient guarantee of Ameri- 
can security, and that it is with a world problem 
that we now have to deal. Until this fact was es- 
tablished by indisputable evidence, and rendered 



244 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

undeniable by a prompt confession that saw in 
this hypocrisy nothing that called for shame, few 
of our citizens could have believed that it would 
ever enter into the plans of the Imperial German 
Government to propose the dismemberment of the 
United States, and that it would even designate 
and portion out whole States as the spoils of a 
war of conquest to be promoted by German gold 
paid to mercenary armies under the command of 
German officers, as the forces of the Ottoman Em- 
pire are already commanded by them, for the pur- 
pose of rendering the will of Germany supreme 
through the conquest of Europe and the mastery 
of the sea. 

Fortunately, this secret purpose was disclosed 
in time to lay bare at a critical moment the real 
attitude of the Imperial Government toward the 
United States, and thus to reveal to the American 
people unmistakably the degeneration of the 
Prussian official mind. Happily, also, both the 
Japanese and the Mexican governments were re- 
sentful of the insult offered to them by the infamy 
of this proposal. Even the citizens of the United 
States whose racial affinities led them at first to 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 245 

sympathize with the German cause on account of 
their belief in the moral soundness of the German 
people must now realize how cruelly they them- 
selves, as well as their friends in Germany, have 
been deceived by the sophistications of the Im- 
perial Government's propaganda, which has 
everywhere made appeal to race prejudice and 
sordid interest, but never to the noble humanism 
that was once esteemed characteristic of German 
thought. 

The evidence that the motives of the Imperial 
German Government are unscrupulous, preda- 
tory, and ruthless has become overwhelming. Its 
conspiracies envelop the world. They have been 
directed under the mask of friendship by official 
diplomacy on our own soil. They lay under 
tribute every quarter of the globe and seek part- 
ners in crime in both hemispheres. Such a power 
is the enemy of all mankind. At last the Ameri- 
can people have come to understand this; but they 
have not, perhaps, even yet fully appreciated how 
America will be affected by the fate of Europe, 
for the fate of Europe will determine the fate of 
the world. 



246 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 
The President of the United States has said: 

"We have no quarrel with the German people. We 
have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and 
friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their 
Government acted in entering the war. It was not with 
their previous knowledge or approval. 

There is a commendable spirit of fairness in 
these words; yet it should not be overlooked that 
the German people are not without responsibility 
for the war and for its consequences. It is an 
error to suppose that the population of Germany 
is the victim of a system of oppression against 
which the people are in a state of mental revolt, 
that they do not sympathize with their Govern- 
ment, or that if they could, they would overthrow 
it as the people of Russia have overthrown the 
Romanoff autocracy. The German people have 
profited greatly in an economic sense from the 
creation of the empire; they believe in a strong 
government, and they have passively accepted 
without protest the Prussian domination. What 
may be called the directing class — the class that 
shapes and controls what passes for "public opin- 
ion" in Germany — is virtually unanimous in its 
support of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and it has 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 247 

its own reasons for this devotion, for the emperor 
is a generous dispenser of honors, which Ger- 
mans especially enjoy, and even has it in his power 
to give financial credit as well as public position 
to those whom he wishes to favor. The army and 
navy have come to be recognized constituents of 
the industrial and commercial system of the Ger- 
man Empire to a degree that has no parallel in 
any other country. They are regarded as the 
tentacles of foreign trade, the prehensile forces 
of national expansion. Add to this that every 
able-bodied male in Germany is trained for war, 
and taught that it is a "biological necessity," and 
it becomes, perhaps, possible to comprehend why 
the Imperial German Government has had — and 
so long as its plans bring success will probably 
continue to have — in whatever it does the support 
of the German nation. Nothing but evident fail- 
ure to realize its projects of annexation and to 
satisfy the ambitions of the directing class can 
destroy its hold upon the country. 

There is in Germany a residue of feudalism 
that exists to the same degree nowhere else in 
Europe. In matters of public interest the Prus- 
sian peasant is mere clay in the hands of his 



248 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Junker master. As much as possible — and his 
grinding toil renders the task easy — he is kept in 
ignorance of politics. To his simple mind the 
kaiser acts, as he professes to act, under divine 
direction, and all the peasant's religious convic- 
tions and emotions thus become imperial property. 
As a soldier he is a cheerful automaton, ready to 
"goose-step" anywhere the command is given him 
to go. As a citizen he is nil. When he votes he 
takes his cue from "die Herrschaften," as he ob- 
sequiously calls his superiors. 

In the cities the industrial workers and their 
leaders have developed a keen interest in political 
matters, but their political ideas are frequently 
nebulous and always largely theoretical, though 
often accompanied by brave and honest convic- 
tions for the most part suppressed. These are the 
elements from which are formed the Social Demo- 
crats. Occasionally the inner consciousness of 
these men overflows in public utterance, some- 
times in the Reichstag itself, as when Karl Lieb- 
knecht said on December 2, 1914: 

I refuse the war credits demanded, at the same time 
protesting against the war, those responsible for it and 
directing it, against the capitalist policy which has in- 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 249 

cited it, against the capitalist designs which it pursues, 
against the plans of annexation, against the violation of 
Belgian and Luxemburg neutrality, against the military 
dictatorship, against the forgetfulness of social and politi- 
cal duty of which the Government and the directing classes 
still at this time render themselves culpable. 

For this attitude Liebknecht, though a member 
of the Reichstag, was sent to prison, and the text 
of his speech was never printed by the German 
newspapers. Those venturing to print it would 
have been suppressed. 

This violation of parliamentary immunity in 
England, in France, or in the United States would 
of itself occasion a popular uprising. In Ger- 
many it sealed the lips of thousands who believed 
as Liebknecht did. "We are not, as you are, in 
the habit of reckoning with public opinion," said 
one of the most distinguished of the younger men 
in official life in Germany. "With us it does not 
count for anything. Opinion has never had any 
effect on policy. It resembles rather the chorus 
of antiquity, which looks on and comments upon 
an action unfolding around it. I should compare 
it," he concludes, "to a crowd that follows, but is 
not admitted to the game." 



250 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

There is, of course, a difference between active 
aggressors and those who, without discriminating 
between their actions, give them loyal support. 
But it is the consequences rather than the motives 
of a national attitude with which other nations 
have to deal. So long, therefore, as the German 
people continue to support a war which their own 
directing class in moments of frank utterance con- 
fesses to be predatory, and still continues to advo- 
cate, the rest of the world must treat them as 
enemies not less than the Government which de- 
rives its strength from their support. 

What then is the testimony of the Germans 
themselves regarding their aims and ambitions in 
this war? In a book of more than four hundred 
octavo pages, the Swiss publicist Grumbach has 
collected ''Documents Published or Secretly Cir- 
culated in Germany Since August 4, 1914," bear- 
ing upon the annexation of conquered territory. 
In his preface he declares, "No competent person 
can dispute the fact that the war aims of Germany 
are of a nature to cause the greatest anxiety to the 
entire world." 

Although the Imperial Government avoids as 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 251 

much as possible committing itself to any definite 
declaration of policy, it allows and even encour- 
ages a popular demand for annexations and in- 
demnities. Men of every party, of every class, 
and of every profession possessing influence in 
public affairs in Germany, have constantly voiced 
the demand for annexations which the Pan-Ger- 
manist literature had made before the war and 
often in the same terms. The expectations of 
spoils which rendered the war popular in Ger- 
many in the beginning have during every stage 
of its progress taken the form of urgency that 
they be realized at its close. 

Not knowing just how the war will end, the 
Imperial Government dares not promise too much, 
but it does not hesitate to keep alive a popular ap- 
proval of any conquests which the forces at its 
disposal may eventually enable it to make. 
"Compare," writes Grumbach, "the passivity 
which the authorities manifested when the Six 
Great Industrial and Agrarian Leagues circu- 
lated their famous annexationist petition without 
encountering the least obstacle, with the confisca- 
tion at the moment of its publication of the peti- 
tion of the anti-annexationist league Neues Voter- 



252 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

land, intended as a reply," followed by the grad- 
ual strangling of the anti-annexationist league un- 
der police surveillance, and the imprisonment of 
its secretary. 

It is important also to note that the territory 
now claimed for annexation in the West is even 
in excess of that marked out for conquest by the 
Pan-German writers in 1911. "In the interest 
of our own existence," says the petition, "we ought 
to enfeeble France politically and economically, 
without scruple, and to render our military and 
strategic situation more favorable with regard to 
it. We are convinced that, to secure that end, a 
serious correction of our whole Western frontier, 
from Belfort to the coast, is necessary. We ought 
to do everything possible to conquer a part of the 
French coast, from the North to the Pas-de-Calais, 
in order to be assured from a strategic point of 
view against England, and to possess a better ap- 
proach to the ocean." The German scientific ex- 
perts, it is explained by one of the commentators 
on this extension of the frontier, were not aware in 
1871 of the vast treasures of coal and iron that 
they had failed to claim ! 

The territory now demanded includes: in the 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 253 

West, the whole of Belgium and the frontier terri- 
tories of France, that is to say, the part of the 
coast almost to the Somme, with a hinterland as- 
suring the complete economic and strategic ex- 
ploitation of a port on the Channel, the iron-mine 
fields of Briey, the frontier fortresses with the 
lines of the Meuse, especially Verdun and Bel- 
fort, with the watershed west of the Vosges, be- 
tween Verdun and Belfort; on the East, "at least" 
parts of the Baltic provinces and the territories to 
the South, in such a manner that the new acquisi- 
tions would protect first of all the present Prus- 
sian provinces the whole length of the frontiers of 
Eastern Prussia, and also the length of the fron- 
tiers of Western Prussia, of Posnania, and of 
Silesia. 

To secure these advantages the six leagues 
stated in their manifesto that they did not desire 
a "premature peace"; for, "from such a peace," 
the petition runs, "one could not expect a suffi- 
cient fruit of victory" ! 

But, in addition to the defined areas of con- 
quest, there are certain indefinite aspirations here 
set forth, "if it be possible to realize them"! 
These include "a colonial empire which would 



254 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

fully satisfy the manifold economic interests of 
Germany, besides guarantees for our commercial 
future and the securing of a sufficient war indem- 
nity, paid in an appropriate form." 

This definition of what the war is really for, 
prepared in May, 1915, is signed by representa- 
tives of the League of Agriculturists, the League 
of German Peasants, the Directing Group of the 
Christian Associations of German Peasants, the 
Central Group of German Industrials, the League 
of Industrials, and the Union of the Middle 
Classes of the Empire, these being the six largest 
and most powerful economic groups in Germany. 
It is not pretended in this petition that the results 
demanded have already been brought within the 
power of the Imperial Government. It is a pro- 
gram of aims to be achieved before the war closes, 
and a confessed enlargement of the purposes with 
which it was begun. "These exigencies," it ex- 
pressly states, "it is needless to say, depend upon 
the possibility that the army may realize them." 

The reasons for these additional conquests are 
not that Belgium and France have forfeited these 
territories by making an attack upon Germany. 
The iron- and coal-fields specified are said to be 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 255 

"indispensable not only for the existence of our 
industrial power, but they constitute military ne- 
cessities"; that is, they are desired as new bases 
for future military activity. It is pointed out 
that "neutral industrial States are constrained to 
make themselves the tools of that one of the bel- 
ligerents that can assure them a supply of coal.' , 
By possessing all the coal in Western Europe, 
Germany can better exercise that restraint. Ger- 
many, it is urged, has already been "obliged to 
have recourse to the Belgian production, in order 
to prevent our neutral neighbors from becoming 
dependent on England." Besides, in Belgium, 
it is explained, are found also "the fundamental 
elements of our principal explosives"; and "ben- 
zol, the only substitute for benzine, which we lack, 
and this is indispensable for submarines." 

For these reasons Belgium and Northwestern 
France must belong to Germany. The native 
populations of these districts, it is insisted, "shall 
not be put in a position to obtain a political influ- 
ence upon the destinies of the German Empire." 
It is also urged that "the existing means of eco- 
nomic power in these territories, including the 
medium and the great properties, shall be placed 



256 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

in the hands of Germans, in a manner that shall 
require France to indemnify and recall the pro- 
prietors"! 

Were these encouragements to depredation and 
conquest merely the spontaneous expression of the 
desires of these signatories, or were they indirectly 
inspired by the Imperial Government itself, with 
a view to making its conduct seem like the exe- 
cution of a popular mandate? It is impossible 
conclusively to answer this question ; but the atti- 
tude of the Imperial Government is certainly not 
one of hostility to the most extreme of these de- 
mands. The emperor, whose stake in this game 
is the greatest of all, is the least definite in state- 
ment ; but his words might be interpreted as ultra- 
annexationist if circumstances should make that 
course seem expedient. He has expressed his de- 
sire for "a peace which would offer us the military, 
political, and economic guarantees of which we 
have need for the future, and which would fulfil 
all the conditions necessary to a free employment 
of our creative forces, at home as well as upon the 
sea." The King of Bavaria expressly wishes "a 
gate of exit direct from the Rhine to the sea," 
with "an enlargement of the Empire beyond its 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 257 

present frontiers." The Duke of Mecklenburg 
demands "a powerful colonial empire in Africa, 
and a sufficient number of solid points d'appui 
on the terrestrial globe for our marine and our 
commerce, coaling stations and stations for wire- 
less telegraphy." The former imperial chan- 
cellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, shrewdly limits his 
expectations to "all the powers and all the real 
guarantees possible"; but these, he insists, "must 
secure for Germany a position unshakably 
strong." The secretary for colonies, Dr. Solf, 
wishes the empire "to possess colonies in all the 
climatic zones, but without prejudice to possible 
territorial gains in Europe." The Prussian min- 
ister of the interior, Loebell, thinks, "The Ger- 
man empire ought to open a road by fire and blood 
to the point where it may fulfil its mission of 
world politics." 

In the same spirit, but often much more defi- 
nitely, speak innumerable privy counsellors, mem- 
bers of the Reichstag, university professors, mili- 
tary officers, diplomatists, and pastors, whose 
views are repeated and generally applauded by 
the press, with the exception of the Social Demo- 
cratic organs, from the daily newspapers to the 



258 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

serious reviews. The evidence is absolutely over- 
whelming that from the first months of the war 
the directing classes of Germany have been eager 
for territorial conquests. 

In order to give some appearance of justice to 
these plans for imperial expansion at the expense 
of Belgium and France, the legend of a "con- 
spiracy" to attack Germany and destroy her, of 
which England is charged with being the insti- 
gator, and France, Belgium, and Russia the eager 
instruments, has been persistently propagated in 
Germany and in the United States. As a penalty, 
runs the legend, for bringing this dreadful scourge 
of war upon peace-loving Germany, these guilty 
nations must repay her for the terrible sacrifices 
made by her brave sons and loyal subjects, who 
have given their lives and their treasures for the 
defense of the Fatherland. Not only territories, 
but money indemnities, are expected; and these 
last the imperial chancellor, as late as February 
27, 1917, asserted are "necessary." This Gov- 
ernment, which declared war on Russia and 
France; which ordered the invasion of Belgium; 
which authorized Austria-Hungary to subjugate 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 259 

Serbia; which in July, 1914, rejected the pro- 
posals of Serbia and the Czar to submit the Aus- 
tro-Serbian question to the Hague Tribunal; 
which has ruined and depopulated Belgium, an- 
nihilated Serbia, and devastated Poland, — this 
Government expects "indemnities for the wrongs 
inflicted upon Germany"; and, to give this ex- 
tortion a color of justice, holds these countries up 
as the guilty culprits ! 

Note, for example, the attempt to heap calum- 
nies upon Belgium for acting in self-defense. 
"Deputy Hirsch [Social Democrat]," cries the 
National-Liberal deputy, Dr. Friedberg, in the 
Prussian Landtag, in January, 1916, — "Deputy 
Hirsch desires that the political and economic in- 
dependence of Belgium be restored. But we have 
no right to forget that Belgium was in no respect 
the neutral country it appeared to be on August 
2, 1914" 7 And so a man who has been assas- 
sinated in his bed is to have his house plundered 
because it was discovered during the murder that 
he had tried to make previous arrangements with 
his neighbors for his protection against this very 
crime ! 

Germany, it is said, did not desire war. But 



260 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

listen to Major-General Von Gebsattel, an emi- 
nent soldier-diplomat, who is not afraid to confess 
the truth to his fellow-officers. In October, 1915, 
he said: 

We have not wished the war to try seriously this time the 
efficiency of our quick-firing cannons and our machine- 
guns — of that we had a very exact idea, particularly we 
old soldiers; — we wished it because we understood our 
people were on the wrong road in their development, be- 
cause we considered the war a necessity, and because we 
were besides aware that a war is easier — as much in its 
military course as for its minimum of sacrifices — when 
a people, in every fashion constrained to struggle for its 
existence, is more resolute and more prompt to choose the 
moment favorable for aggression. 

Here is no attempt to conceal the fact that the 
present war was not only desired by the German 
officers, but that the time for it was opportunely 
chosen, yet not without serious miscalculations, 
and the whole progress of the war has shown how 
groundless and how ignoble the accusation of an 
international conspiracy is. 

Realizing the futility of the conspiracy legend, 
the theologian Mumm, a Christian-Socialist 
deputy to the Reichstag, in the Berliner Neueste 
Nachrichten, recommends that the conquest be 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 261 

justified to the Germans and to the world by show- 
ing that historically, at some time in the past, 
Belgium — which he describes as "a mere poli- 
tical concept due to chance and the pis-aller of 
embarrassed diplomats" — and the other coveted 
lands were once parts of the German Empire. 
"Dip into the past," he urges, "in order to write 
that which should be known at present : the read- 
ers will understand well what inferences to draw, 
when it is not possible to expose them openly." 
A truly ingenious method of concealing a cold- 
blooded national crime! 

In some quarters it is considered almost trea- 
sonable to the empire to question the rectitude of 
forcible annexation. Calling to account the 
former secretary for the colonies, Dr. Bernhard 
Dernburg, for assuring the people of the United 
States, where he was on mission in May, 1915, 
that the promise of the imperial chancellor to re- 
store the independence of Belgium after the war 
would be kept, the Tdgliche Rundschau declared 
for home consumption: "If Herr Dernburg has 
really offered to our enemies — or the same as 
enemies — the voluntary evacuation of Belgium, 
that would be an unheard-of audacity, against 



262 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

which it would be necessary to direct the most 
vehement protest. If he has, in fact, said that 
Germany cannot think of increasing its territory 
in Europe, that would be on his part an extraordi- 
nary presumption! " And the Leipziger Neueste 
Nachrichten, ridiculing the statement attributed 
to Dr. Dernburg that Germany would not forcibly 
subjugate neighboring peoples, doubts that he 
really made such a statement; for, it declares, 
"such a criterion would put an end to all political 
development and to all colonization." 

The orthodox German doctrine on that sub- 
ject, it seems, was stated by the chief of the Na- 
tional-Liberal party, Herr Bassermann, as early 
as December, 1914, when he said in the Reich- 
stag: "We shall hold till the most remote future 
the countries fertilized by German blood. . . . 
We shall be able to keep what we have acquired, 
and to acquire in addition that of which we have 
need." 

But we do not reach the final formula of Ger- 
man tribal ambition until we have received it 
from the chief of the Free Conservative party in 
the Prussian Landtag, Herr Zedlitz-Neukirch. 
He said: 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 263 

If the peace we aim at is to be durable, all the ter- 
ritorial acquisitions which the General Staff deems neces- 
sary to shield us from the danger of a future war must 
be secured by that peace; and no regard for our adver- 
saries, their country, or their people, should prevent our im- 
posing these conditions, least of all the so-called right of 
the inhabitants of the territories that are to be conquered 
to dispose of themselves. 

The purposes for which the war was begun 
having failed of accomplishment through an un- 
expected obstinacy of resistance on the part of the 
Entente Allies, the problem of negotiating a peace 
has become a serious one for the Imperial Ger- 
man Government. Not to make any annexations 
or collect any indemnities beyond the levies ex- 
torted from Belgium and Poland during military 
occupation, would signify a defeat of the Ger- 
man plans. To this kind of a settlement all 
those responsible for the war quite naturally ob- 
ject, and desire no relinquishment of territory 
occupied and no abatement of f rightfulness, in 
the hope that the Allies may soon be disunited or 
exhausted, thus leaving Germany the victor. 
The Hohenzollern dynasty, having taken the re- 
sponsibility of this vast predatory enterprise, 
cannot, however, save its face without showing 



264 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

some justification for the "sacrifices" imposed 
upon the people of Germany. So long as the 
Allies continue their opposition, this embarrass- 
ment will endure; and in the meantime two 
changes are occurring in the minds of the German 
people: a growing weariness of the war as a re- 
sult of exhaustion, and a gradual enlightenment 
regarding the responsibility for a war which the 
mass of the German people believed at its begin- 
ning was forced upon the empire by a combina- 
tion of hostile powers. As a result, the desire 
for peace even without annexations and indem- 
nities at first insisted upon by a group of Social 
Democrats is rapidly becoming the sentiment of 
the country, with the exception of the Junker 
class and the military and industrial imperialists, 
whose very existence as a dominating caste in 
the empire depends upon the continued alliance 
of private business with dynastic and military 
power. Between these instigators of predatory 
war and the peace-loving people of Germany the 
former imperial chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, 
anxious to save the dynasty, hesitated to formulate 
the Imperial Government's terms of peace, and 
to the end of his administration he adhered to 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 265 

his ambiguous formula, "All the pawns and all 
the real guarantees possible." 

The embarrassment is not, and is not likely 
to be, greatly relieved by changes in the persons 
holding office under the house of Hohenzollern. 
The aims and interests always remain the same, 
and the naming by the emperor of new ministers 
serves only to postpone the real issues of reform 
and the definition of policy. It means little that 
the Reichstag has by a large majority declared, 
"We are driven by no lust of conquest," or that 
it professes to repudiate "forced acquisitions of 
territory and political, economic, and financial 
violations," for the Reichstag is not the Imperial 
German Government. On the contrary, it has 
again and again vindicated its title to be called 
a "hall of echoes." Installed in the seat of power 
by the military party, the successor of Bethmann- 
Hollweg, Dr. Michaelis, speaking with all the 
authority of the emperor in what the family coun- 
cils have decided to be the interest of the dynasty, 
has said, "The constitutional rights of the head 
of the Empire must not be endangered, and I am 
not willing to permit any one to take the reins 
out of my hands." 



266 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

Impotent as the Reichstag may be as an ex- 
pression of the will of the German people, one 
fact is evident, and is of the highest importance: 
the Imperial Government is confronted with a 
greater problem in the making of peace than it 
has ever had to face in the prosecution of the 
war. The reason for this is that the Imperial 
Government can no longer conceal the alliance 
between predatory business and military power 
which brought on the war. 

Between the demand on the one side that the 
real objects of the war be fulfilled by annexa- 
tions, and on the other that the professions of 
the Imperial Government that it was purely de- 
fensive be established in the making of peace, 
the house of Hohenzollern is loaded with a heavy 
responsibility. It cannot safely disappoint 
the alliance between the army and the preda- 
tory class; and it cannot conveniently confess to 
the loyal subjects who have believed its profes- 
sions and been brought to the brink of ruin by 
the war, that it has deliberately deceived them. 
Yet this is the choice that lies before it. 

The peril of the situation is frankly confessed 
by at least one German statesman of the highest 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 267 

character, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe. 
His wise and brave utterances are worthy of the 
son of the imperial German chancellor, who in 
1899, during the first Hague Conference — at the 
instance of the American ambassador at Berlin 
and first delegate to the conference, Hon. Andrew 
D. White, who sent a messenger to Berlin for the 
purpose — warned the emperor of the lasting in- 
jury he would inflict upon Germany if he al- 
lowed the German delegates to block the pro- 
posals for the formation of an international 
tribunal, — as they had been instructed to do, — 
and succeeded in obtaining a reluctant with- 
drawal of open opposition. 

Prince von Hohenlohe, with similar foresight, 
takes the ground that jockeying for spoils of war, 
instead of frankly stating Germany's desire for 
peace, is a shortsighted policy. He holds that 
for the German people, as for all others, the 
highest and the only true reward for the sac- 
rifices made in the war is the assurance of an en- 
during peace; and such a peace cannot be based 
on the spoils of war which Chancellor von Beth- 
mann-Hollweg and his successor are hoping to 
secure, but must be founded upon a just and hon- 



268 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

orable settlement which will leave behind it no 
sentiments of future revenge. Nothing, he holds, 
could in reality so strengthen the empire, within 
as well as without, as the establishment of such a 
peace. 

The German people, he believes, when fully 
instructed, will draw the proper lessons from the 
war. It may be well for them, he thinks, to real- 
ize that their own government was in the first 
place responsible for the war; but, he contends, 
they will not permit foreign interference in their 
political organization. 

It required more than ordinary courage for 
the prince to say publicly, in reply to the clerical 
deputy, Spahn: 

Without doubt, the majority of the German nation is 
still monarchist. The different peoples of Germany still 
hold to their princes, more or less, according to the in- 
dividual character of the sovereigns. But that confidence 
in the supreme chief of the Empire is still entirely intact 
is an affirmation which, after three years of war, cannot 
be maintained. . . . Confidence in the direction of the Em- 
pire has begun to disappear among the German people. 
. . . They begin to ask themselves how it happens that 
nearly all the world is in arms against us, and who is 
responsible for it. 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 269 

With regard to the attitude of the German 
masses toward terms of peace, the prince pro- 
ceeds to say : 

The German people as a whole do not demand the 
annexation of foreign territories. Only little groups of in- 
dustrials and the superheated Pan-Germans, who are not 
recruited from the masses of the population, but from the 
circles of professors, functionaries, and burghers, desire 
annexations. Herr Scheidemann has been called to or- 
der because he pronounced the word "Revolution" from the 
tribune in the Reichstag. And yet he has only repeated 
what may be heard every day on the street. He also 
added, "We have not yet arrived at that point." But it 
would be puerile to dissimulate what might come of it, 
if the men who hold in their hands the destinies of the 
German Empire are not of sufficient proportions to carry 
the responsibilities that are placed upon them, to recognize 
the necessities of the new times, and to take account of 
them. In that case the moment might well come when 
they would recognize with terror that it is too late, and 
that the German people have finally lost patience. 

While the war lasts it will be difficult for any 
German to oppose the Imperial Government, but 
it is evident that there are in Germany inevitable 
tendencies toward profound political changes. 
The nature and extent of these will depend largely 
upon the results of the war. If the Allies were 



270 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

overcome or disunited, the triumph of autocracy 
would be complete. No one in Germany could 
resist the effect of victorious armies returning in 
triumph from the field and a peace dictated by 
successful imperialism. On the other hand, the 
house of Hohenzollern is preparing for a different 
contingency. The emperor, always sensitive to 
deep-seated popular movements, notwithstanding 
his strident proclamations that his royal preroga- 
tives are "from God alone," has already pro- 
posed "a people's kingdom of the Hohenzollerns," 
in the faith, it would appear, that a right con- 
ferred by the people might be better than none 
at all, and with a growing suspicion that the 
people, in the end, if the armies are beaten, will 
be more powerful than he has supposed them 
to be. In that case, it would be as expedient to 
disavow new ministers as it was to end the tight- 
rope performance of Bethmann-Hollweg. The 
negotiations for reform would have only to be re- 
sumed, for this house of Hohenzollern is a shrewd 
race of traders, which from a Swabian lordship 
over a village of peasants has known how to raise 
itself to the eminence of empire by an alterna- 
tion of bloodshed and bargain, and would per- 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 271 

haps rather reign by the will of the people than 
to follow in the footsteps of the Romanoff retire- 
ment. 

With what ease in an extremity the Imperial 
Government might carry on negotiations for "a 
people's kingdom of the Ilohenzollerns" is illus- 
trated by the interest taken when the same Herr 
Scheidemann who pronounced the word "Revolu- 
tion" in the Reichstag was engaged with approval 
in sounding through socialistic channels the pos- 
sibilities of a separate peace with Russia, and 
won even from the annexationist press the com- 
pliment that he "was in a fair way to become a 
statesman." Yet it was Herr Scheidemann who 
had boldly enunciated the doctrine that "the an- 
nexation of the territory of a foreign population 
constitutes a violation of the right of peoples to 
dispose of themselves." This would be new doc- 
trine to the house of Hohenzollern ; but, if the 
army should fail, it would not be surprising if 
the world were given to understand that the em- 
peror, as some have contended, had been forced 
into the war by his own officers and their con- 
federates against his will! The historian may 
some day be able to produce the evidence that this 



272 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

is true. If this should prove to be the case, it 
would be the end of Prussianism, but would it 
not be the end of imperialism also? 

Whatever may be the disclosures of the future, 
it cannot be doubted that this is the main issue 
of the Great War — the right of peoples to dis- 
pose of themselves. If this fundamental right 
is conceded, there is a solid foundation for the 
new Europe when the peace congress meets to 
determine the future; for this right involves the 
repudiation of autocracy, giving the state an 
ethical basis, and at the same time implies the 
existence of the inherent obligation of every peo- 
ple to respect that right in others. 

Unhappily, this doctrine has not yet been 
clearly enunciated as a principle of public law. 
In Germany it is still disputed. The eminent 
professor of law in the University of Berlin, Dr. 
Joseph Kohler, writes: 

The irresistible force of war and conquest takes posses- 
sion of countries and peoples. That is one of the funda- 
mental principles of international law, and it suffices to 
make litter of the old sentimentalities. ... It is need- 
less to be disquieted over the superfluous sentiment regard- 
ing a plebiscite, in virtue of which it is of importance to 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 273 

consult the population to know if it wishes to belong to one 
state or another. The territory carries with it the popu- 
lation that inhabits it; the individual who is not satisfied 
has only to quit the territory of the State. . . . The ra- 
tional assent of a people has hardly any sense; the im- 
pulsive forces of the popular soul repose the greater part 
of the' time below the threshold of reason and reflection. 
Thus it is all reduced to force, an inflexible domination. 

This is Prussianism, which is at once a philoso- 
phy, an institution, and above all an army. It 
is the apotheosis of autocratic power. It has 
created the Prussian state, and the logical policy 
of the Prussian state is the domination of the 
world. " World dominion or downfall" — that is 
the declared alternative that runs through the 
desperate plotting and remorseless barbarism with 
which Prussia is leading to ruin one of the great- 
est nations on the earth. 

Historically, Prussia may justly claim that Eu- 
rope has never formally repudiated the doctrine 
of the right of conquest, and that virtually every 
state has at some time practised it. This can- 
not be disputed, and it is important that it should 
not be forgotten, for the time has now arrived to 
determine permanently whether arbitrary force or 
the generally accepted principles of justice are to 



274 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

constitute the basis of European civilization. If 
the Central powers are to be judged by their con- 
duct, and the Allied powers by their professions, 
this is really the fundamental issue between them. 
If the future of Europe and of the civilized world 
is to rest upon the assumption that a powerful 
state, in order to satisfy its economic ambitions, 
may take possession of the territory and people 
of a weaker state by military force, and appro- 
priate the land and the people to its purposes, then 
all Europe and all the world is already Prussian- 
ized in principle and will soon be Prussianized 
in fact. It would be encouraging to believe that 
only the Central Powers and their Turkish and 
Bulgarian allies accept this principle. 

It was the menaced application of the Prussian 
theory of international relationship to the United 
States that finally clarified the vision of the Amer- 
ican people and enabled them to perceive that neu- 
trality toward an empire holding, practising, and 
plotting to extend and perpetuate that theory is 
impossible. They had hesitated to avenge their 
dead, cruelly slaughtered on the high seas; they 
had been reluctant to join in what seemed to be a 
European quarrel ; they believed that the German 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 275 

nation would itself rise in denunciation of such 
enormities as it had been led into perpetrating; 
they waited long for this in the faith that a whole 
people — a people that had risen to such heights 
of excellence in many forms of civilization — could 
not always be blinded by leaders who defied all 
the nations of the earth to check what they deemed 
to be their irresistible force; but thus far they 
have waited in vain. 

Those who best know Germany and the Ger- 
mans do not look for a general revolution while 
the German armies are not beaten in the field. 
Revolt against the existing system is not only ex- 
tremely perilous for the persons who may pro- 
pose it, but it is in the German character to be 
loyal to the Imperial Government while their 
country is believed to be still in peril. Not until 
the whole ghastly truth dawns upon them regard- 
ing the atrocities committed in their name, how 
they themselves have been deceived; what cruel 
wrongs have been done to their sons and brothers 
in leading them to the shambles for the acquisi- 
tion of ports, and mines, and war indemnities, and 
that this has brought only disaster, debt, and 
shame upon them, will the German people cry 



276 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

out for a more responsible control of their own 
destinies and a reorganization of international life 
upon a basis of peace through justice. Already 
isolated voices have been heard demanding these 
changes. The protests have come mainly from 
the Social Democrats, but it is not they alone who 
are aware that Germany stands before the rest 
of the world as a convicted culprit whose good 
name has been lost through an unholy alliance 
between private greed and the weird priest-craft 
of divine prerogative, a partnership which has 
decked out an altar of sacrifice in the name of re- 
ligion in order to give to military power a sacra- 
mental sanction for the commission of wholesale 
crime. 

That which has made it possible for this al- 
liance to obtain the support of the German people 
is the representation that Germany is the victim 
of the selfish designs of other powers, and that a 
fair field for German industry and commerce and 
the safety of Germany from future attack could 
be secured only by fighting. So long as this is 
believed to be true, the Imperial Government will 
not improbably be able to command support even 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 277 

from those who do not approve of aggressive de- 
signs on the part of Germany. 

The pathway to peace therefore leads in the 
direction of better guarantees of justice to all na- 
tions. So long as purely national interests are 
made preeminent, military rivalry will be con- 
sidered justified. It is therefore to be desired 
that the fruits of victory in this war shall be in- 
ternational fruits. No nation should be per- 
mitted in the great settlement to place its private 
interests above the general welfare. Each na- 
tion involved in the Great War had, no doubt, 
its own special national interests to serve in en- 
tering it; but it cannot truthfully be said that 
the Entente Allies had ends in view that were not 
just. Russia was vindicating the right of Serbia 
to a judicial hearing. France was Russia's ally 
and a designated victim of German attack. Eng- 
land was a pledged defender of Belgian neutrality, 
and Belgium was ruthlessly subjugated in viola- 
tion of solemn treaty obligations made to the 
United States as well as to the European powers. 
America's entrance into the war was a response to 
repeated warlike aggressions and secret plots di- 



278 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

rected against its industries, its neutral rights, 
and its territorial integrity. As the President has 
well said: "We have no selfish ends to serve. 
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek 
no indemnities for ourselves, no material compen- 
sation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We 
are but one of the champions of the rights of man- 
kind." But this championship of the highest 
human interests would be illusory and nugatory 
if the treaties of peace were in any respect embodi- 
ments of the doctrines against which we are con- 
tending, no matter in whose interest they might 
be invoked. The cause for which we are fight- 
ing would be lost if there remained in the field any 
bully or any braggart reasserting a right to claim 
territory or to enslave a people on the mere ground 
of conquest by superior military force. The 
American people are not participating in this 
struggle for the purpose of setting any European 
nation above another. 

There will be questions of reparation, of 
restoration, and of guarantees for the future, but 
these adjudications should be made on judicial 
principles and not merely on military grounds. 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 279 

Claims for damages and for advantages made by 
the belligerents might very well be submitted to 
the judgment of others before they are pressed as 
final conditions of settlement. If there is to be 
a durable peace, the idea of internationalizing 
the results of the war must receive an immense 
development. The victory of the Allies will not 
belong to one, but to all; and the sooner the fact 
of community of interest and a disposition to 
submit to collective judgment can be established 
in the minds of the belligerents, the sooner will 
peace be possible, and the more just and lasting it 
will be. Only in this spirit can the seas and 
oceans of the world be made freely accessible and 
safe for all nations. Many routes of transit that 
have hitherto been closed to the nations shut off 
from the sea will need to be opened, and the back- 
ward nations of the world must be treated as the 
wards in common of those more advanced in 
civilization. 

Nothing could contribute more effectually to a 
termination of the war than a frank disavowal 
of exclusive national gains. The exemplary 
spirit of renunciation manifested by Russia and 
the known absence of selfish purposes on the part 



280 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

of the United States might well inspire such a dis- 
avowal. A clear statement of the principles of 
public law which it is desirable to establish for 
the future, with a solemn compact to observe and 
sustain them, would be an appropriate prelimi- 
nary to the negotiations for peace. The whole 
world would then be in a position to express its 
voluntary adherence to those principles. Such 
a compact would necessarily involve the repudia- 
tion of the right of conquest for the purpose of 
acquiring territory by military force from an in- 
dependent state, and its infamous corollary that 
the population goes with the land and becomes 
subject to the will of the conqueror; for the only 
foundation upon which Europe can be recon- 
structed as a society of states is the inviolability 
of its law-abiding members. 

History will judge the nations involved in the 
Great War much less by the motives with which 
they profess to have entered into it than by the 
results they finally bring out of it. 

If the signatories of the treaty of peace base 
its terms upon secret compacts for aggrandize- 
ment, and go forth from the peace congress with 
new secret engagements in their pockets, the idea 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 281 

of a new Europe will prove but a dream, and it 
will be with the old Europe in a new guise that 
America will still have to live. 

The American people will doubtless support 
their Government in joining a league of peace, 
but they will expect from it a genuine purpose of 
peace and not an occasion for brewing new con- 
flicts into which the United States or other Amer- 
ican countries would be drawn. 

At least one English writer has hastily assumed 
that 

President Wilson has offered to guarantee a league of 
peace and to back international treaties by the promise 
that America will in the last resort intervene against the 
aggressor and the treaty-breaker. In other words, she 
stands security for such treaties in the future. Her inter- 
vention is a new fact, a guarantee of a kind with which the 
past was unacquainted. 

Such a guarantee would, indeed, be "a new 
fact," but of a kind with which the future also 
is likely to be unacquainted. The President has 
of course made no such pledge. No intelligent 
statesman would "stand security" — knowing how 
treaties are sometimes made — for treaties he had 
not previously approved. 



282 THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 

A league of peace there will no doubt be; but 
such a league cannot at the same time be a league 
for future wars, either in the military or the 
economic sense. Guarantees must be required 
from all and equally, but the best guarantee will 
be a new community of interest, based on the 
award to each signatory of the treaty of peace 
of equal rights and the requirement of equal 
duties. 

The American people desire to oppose aggres- 
sion and treaty-breaking; but, if they are wise, 
they will not pledge their Government, under the 
pretext of enforcing peace, either to make war 
on other nations, or to submit to war as a legal 
act if made upon itself, in circumstances wholly 
unknown at the time when the covenant for peace 

is made. 

t 
The true wisdom is for America to associate 

itself in good faith with the forces that seek for 

peace with justice in the world; but, in order to 

perform effectively its part, the first duty is always 

to be able to defend itself. 



INDEX 



Absolutism, 13-16 
Agrarian leagues, 251 
Alldeutscher Verband, 91 
Althusius, Johannes, on sover- 
eignty, 17-18 
Annexations proposed by Ger- 
many, 250-262 
Armaments, limitation of, 125- 

126 
Austin, John, referred to, 51 
Australia, 117 

Austria-Hungary, as part of 
Central Europe, 153-165 
the weak point in Prussia's 
plans, 168 
Autocracy, cases of, 227-228 
indictment of, 214-215 
mysticism of, 216-217 
subsists on war, 231 
wanting a moral foundation, 
221 

Backward nations, 279 
Bagdad railway, referred to, 

169, 126 
Balkan States, future fate of 

the, 155, 169, 237 
Bassermann, German deputy, 

quoted, 262 
Belgium, invasion of, 77 
future fate of, 169 
neutrality of, 277 
retention of by Germany, 259 

283 



Berchtold, Count, telegram 
from, 129 

Bethmann-Hollweg, referred to, 
170, 172, 257, 258, 264, 
265 

Bismarck, Prince von, referred 
to, 86, 87, 98, 140, 142, 
152, 166 

Bodin, Jean, referred to, 15 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, referred 
to, 15, 117, 176 

British Empire, creation of, 36 
neutrality of expected, 126— 

127 
transformation of, 115-116, 
121 

Bryce, Viscount, quoted or re- 
ferred to, 108-109, 114 

Biilow, Prince von, quoted or 
referred to, 85-103, 141-142 

Bundesrat, powers of the Ger- 
man, 143-144 

Byzantinism in Germany, 144 

Canada, 117-119 

Catherine II, attitude regard- 
ing Poland, 77 

Central Europe, referred to, 
151-157, 161-169 

Cheradame, Andre, referred to, 
102 

China, interventions in, 121, 
184 



284 



INDEX 



Christendom, failure of to 
unite Europe, 3-4, 10, 27 

Coal, importance of to political 
control, 255 

Commerce, relation of to peace 
and war, 24-35 

Commonwealth of nations, a 
vision of a, 104 

Conferences, how organized, 
188, 190, 192 
of business men, 204-206 
See also The Hague Confer- 
ences 

Conquest, the right of, 20-22, 
273 

Constantinople, the fall of, 3 

Courts, international, 68, 193- 
195 

Cruce, Emeric, referred to, 
175 

Cuba, Germany's desire to pos- 
sess, 99 

Culture, the true nature of, 64- 
66 

Curia, the Roman, 4 

Czar of Russia, the, telegram 
from, 127 
referred to, 137 



no alliance of with autoc- 
racy, 226 
the testing time of, 116, 133 
the war of, 108-111 
Dernberg, Dr. Bernhard, re- 
ferred to, 261-262 
Diplomacy, the function of, 

199 
Divine right, the dogma of, 

228, 276 
Dominions, the British, 117— 

119 
Dreadnaughts, the first building 

of, 125 
Dynasties, abolition of, 8 
secret solidarity of, 9 
struggle of with feudalism, 
12 

Economic imperialism, 170, 
200-203, 229 

Egypt, British attitude in, 125 

"Encirclement" of Germany, al- 
leged policy of, 98, 125, 
258 

Entente Allies, aims of, 84-85, 
109-110, 120, 274, 277 

Evolution, political, 67 



Daily Telegraph, referred to, 

142 
Declaration of Independence, 
omission of sovereignty in, 
179-180 
Democracy, a basis for interna- 
tional law, 227 
a constructive principle, 208 
dangers of, 32 

involves a principle of self- 
abnegation, 221-222 



Faustrecht, 4 

Fenelon, quoted, 175 

Fetials, college of, 9 

Feudalism, character of, 12 

Fichte, referred to, 46 

Fisher, Mr. Andrew, quoted, 
119 

Frederick II, of Prussia, quoted 
or referred to, 77, 166 

"Freedom of the seas," mean- 
ing of, 122 



INDEX 



285 






Friedberg, German deputy, re- 
ferred to, 259 

French Revolution, referred to, 
15, 19, 46 

Gebsattel, Major-General von, 

quoted, 260 
George III, attitude toward 

Poland, 77 
George V, referred to, 130 
German Emperor, declaration 

of war by the, 127 
powers ascribed to the, 141 
See also William II 
German Empire, aspiration for 

world power by the, 122- 

124 
constitution of the, 143-144 
efficiency of the in war, 147 
the transfiguration of the, 

136-142, 145-146, 153, 171 
"Germanic liberties," referred 

to, 140 
Government, the purpose of, 44 
ownership as an economic 

corporation, 24 
Greater Germany, 93-96 
Greece, the future fate of, 169 
Greek Empire, the fall of the, 

4-5 
Grey, Sir Edward, telegrams 

from, 128-129 
Grotius, Hugo, referred to, 13 
Grumbach, S., publicist, quoted, 

250 
Guarantees of peace, 278, 281- 

282 

Hague Conferences, The, 20, 
83, 125, 136-137, 189-191 



Hamburg to Bagdad route, see 
Bagdad railway 

Hapsburg, house of, referred to, 
8, 154 

Harms, Professor, referred to, 
151 

Hegel, referred to, 42-52, 63, 
139 

Helgoland, 124 

Hirsch, German deputy, re- 
ferred to, 259 

Hohenlohe, Prince Alexander, 
quoted, 267-269 

Hohenzollern, house of, re- 
ferred to, 89, 246, 263- 
266, 270-271 

Holland, future fate of, 155, 
169 

Holy Alliance, the, 19, 178 

Holy Roman Empire of the 
German Nation, 154 

Humanism, struggle of with 
tribalism, 5, 10 

Ideals, international, 38, 41, 66 
Imperialism, dynastic, 73-74 
economic, 68-69, 70-71, 84, 

120-121 
See also Economic imperial- 
ism 
Industrialism, modern, 24, 30- 

35 
International ideals, the real- 
ization of, 66 
Internationalism, repudiation of 
by Germany, 138, 148-149 
International law, development 
of, 27 
existence of, 56-57 
not wholly disregarded, 58- 
62 



286 



INDEX 



limitations of, 193, 198-199, 
204 
International organization, 40, 

172-174, 187 
International right, repudiated 
by Tannenberg, 96 
defied by absolutism, 182- 
183 
International unions, 199-200 

Japan, referred to, 241, 244 
Judicial decisions, enforcement 
of, 196-197 
See also Courts 

Kant, quoted or referred to, 14, 

43-50, 176 
Kiel Canal, referred to, 124 
Kohler, Dr. Joseph, quoted, 272 
Kultur, the "holy" mission of, 
90-91, 166 
See also Culture 

Law, origin of, 215-216 
nature of, 49, 61 
supremacy of, 4 
See also International law 

Law, Mr. Bonar, referred to, 
115 

Laws, of struggle, survival, and 
selection, 173 

League to enforce peace, 176, 
281 

"Liberty of national evolution," 
meaning of, 122 

Liebknecht, Karl, quoted or re- 
ferred to, 248-249 

Liszt, Franz von, quoted, 122 

Loebell, German minister, re- 
ferred to, 257 

Locke, referred to, 14 



Louis XIV, referred to, 175 
Louis XV, attitude on Poland, 

77 
Lycurgus, "the modern," 175 

Machiavelli, referred to, 11, 21, 
22 

Maria Theresa, attitude on 
Poland, 78 

Mark Brandenburg, referred to, 
151 

Marriage, effect of in forming 
nation-states, 8 

Mexico, referred to, 241, 244 
Gulf of, 100 

Meyer, Professor Edward, 
quoted or referred to, 136- 
138, 141-142, 146-149 

Michaelis, German chancellor, 
declaration of, 265 

Militarism, alliance of with in- 
dustry and commerce, 30- 
31, 34-35 

Mitt el-Euro pa, referred to, 
151-152 

Moltke, Field-marshal von, re- 
ferred to, 166 

Montesquieu, referred to, 14, 
175 

Muir, Professor Ramsey, 
quoted, 121 

Mumm, German deputy, quoted 
260-261 



Nation, what is a? 226 
National monarchies, 5, 6, 12 
Nation-states, formation of 6 

not accidents, 7 

not of pure race, 7 

unity of, 7 



INDEX 



287 



Naumann, Dr. Friedrich, Ger- 
man deputy, quoted or re- 
ferred to, 151-169 

Neues Vaterland, anti-annexa- 
tionist league, 251 

Neutrality, nature of, 21-22 

New Zealand, 117 

"Open door," the, 206 
Ottoman Empire, establishment 
of in Europe, 3 

future fate of, 169 

reference to, 111, 244 

Palace of peace, 137 
Pan-German propaganda, 146, 

151, 191, 251-252 
Pax Romana, 4 

Peace congress of the future, 
158 
enforcement of, 62, 63, 197, 

281-282 
first article of a treaty of, 

134-135 
repudiation of by Tannen- 

berg, 93 
the pathway to, 277 
under absolutism an "empty 
dream," 48 
Penn, William, referred to, 175 
Personality, as a basis of rights, 
43, 50, 223 
claims of, 65 
development of, 63 
Phillips, Alison, quoted, 178 
Poland, partition of, 77 
Protection of citizens abroad, 

duty of, 202-203 
Prussia, domination of, 88-91, 
141-151, 166-169 



King of German emperor, 

143 
official philosophy of, 103 
origin of, 150 
Prussianism, denned, 273 
Prussian peasant, political igno- 
rance of the, 247-248 

Reparation after the war, 278 
Restoration, after the war, 278 
Reichstag, Declaration by the 
German, 265 
limited powers of the Ger- 
man, 143-144, 266 
Rhodes, Cecil, referred to, 154 
Rights, the foundation of, 51 
Roman law, 4, 9, 12 

republic and unjust wars, 9 
effects of, 4, 5 
Romanoff dynasty, the, referred 

to, 246 
Rousseau, J. J., referred to, 14 
Russia, revolution in, 115, 246, 
279 

Saint-Pierre, the Abbe de, re- 
ferred to, 176 

Sarajevo, the assassination at, 
112 

Sazanoff, Mr., telegram from, 
128-129 

Scandinavian Kingdoms, the 
future fate of the, 155, 169, 
237 

Scheidemann, Herr, German 
deputy, 269, 271 

Seeley, Sir John, referred to, 36 

Sifton, Sir Clifford, quoted, 116 

Six Great Leagues, for an- 
nexation, referred to, 251, 
254 



288 



INDEX 



"Social consciousness," 220 
Social Democrats, in Germany, 

248, 257, 264, 276 
"Social solidarity," 219 
Society of States, a real, 106- 

107 
Solf, Dr., German colonial 

minister, referred to, 257 
Sovereignty, absolute concep- 
tion of, 12, 14, 16 
Althusius' conception of, 17- 

18 
as substance of the State, 

10 
consequences of the absolute 

conception of, 27 
definition of, 14 
idea of unchanged by French 

Revolution, 24 
in American sense, 179-181, 

188 
in constitutional states, 55- 

56 
necessary limitation of, 183— 

184, 188, 191 
reconstruction of the idea of, 
234 
South Africa, 117 
Spahn, Dr., German deputy, re- 
ferred to, 268 
Spencer, Herbert, referred to, 

30 
State, a business corporation, 
31-32 
absolute conception of the, 

12-13 
democratic conception of the, 

217-219 
fiduciary function of the, 153 
fundamental function of the, 
54 



irresponsibility of the, in the 
absolutist conception, 26 

modern demands upon the, 29 

nature of the modern na- 
tional, 25 

Professor Meyer's concep- 
tion of the German, 138, 
139 

revised views of the, 79 

theories of the, 41, 42, 43, 44, 
46, 48 

Treitschke's idea of the, 155 
States, constitutional, 68 

responsibility of, 37 

the society of, 106, 107 
Submarine warfare, 238-243 
Sully's alleged "Great Design," 

referred to, 176 
Switzerland, coexistence of dif- 
ferent races in, 66 

future fate of, 155, 169, 237 
taxation in, 60 

Tannenberg, Otto Richard, 
quoted or referred to, 91- 
100 

Thirty Years' War, referred to, 
175 

Trade rivalry, 33-34 

Treaties, German drafts of fu- 
ture, 101-102 

Treitschke, referred to, 155 

Trench defenses in the future, 
160-161 

Tribalism, struggle of human- 
ism with, 5 

Tribunals, international, see 
Courts 

Troppau, the Conference of, 19 

Trusts, international, 207 

Turkey, intervention in, 184 



INDEX 



289 



relation of to Germany, 97 
See also Ottoman Empire 

Unions, international, 199-200 
United States of America, in- 
ternational law in the, 56 
reasons of the for entering 
the Great War, 236-245, 
274 
Utrecht, Congress of, 175 

Vienna, Congress of, 19, 157 
Villari, referred to, 11 

War, the unlimited right to 

wage, 19-21 
Wars, duration of modern, 74- 

76 
results of trade rivalry, 34 
Waterways, 206, 279 
Wellington, Duke of, referred 

to, 117 
Weltpolitik, German dream of, 

92 



Westphalia, Peace of, its effect, 
76 
treaties of, 13 

William I, German emperor, re- 
ferred to, 142 

William II, telegram from, 131 
revolt against produced by 
Daily Telegraph incident, 
142 
See also German Emperor 

White, Hon. Andrew D., re- 
ferred to, 267 

Wilson, President, quoted or re- 
ferred to, 243, 246, 278, 
281 

Zanzibar, 124 

Zedlitz-Neukirch, Prussian dep- 
uty, quoted, 262-263 

Zimmermann, Herr, German 
Secretary for foreign af- 
airs, quoted, 240-241 

Zeppelin air-ships, 126 













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